Social analytics training manual 2.9

1 BlitzMetricsTM Social Analytics Training Manual

BlitzMetrics.com 1960 Joslyn Pl. Boulder, CO. 80304 CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY V2.9

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Social Intelligence for Brands



Loved By

The Media Loves Us, Too...



This guide will walk you through the skills and steps you’ll need for your brand to be successful at Facebook Marketing. Get ready to learn how to create performance reports on how your campaigns are doing — not just blindly inserting numbers into a chart, but understanding WHAT worked or didn’t, WHY that was the case, and what ACTIONS to take based on that insight.

The optimizing of brands on Facebook is a mix on science and art — art for creative inspiration and science for traffic management and optimization. Together we can leverage your brand’s existing power and marketing assets by understanding the math of traffic optimization, why consumers connect with brands, and the underlying analytics rigor of making your selected metrics improve.

Do you have to be a programmer or learn to code? No, but you will learn how traffic flows based on measurable influence, how to troubleshoot when conversion rates are lower than expected, and how we can deliver a targeted fan count and revenue figure.

Your success is our success. Ask questions. Together, let’s bring your brand to the next level!

Sincerely,

Dennis YuCEO, [email protected]

Welcome!



Facebook Training

Section 1 - Facebook Timeline and Wall Management 10 1.1 Facebook Timeline 10 1.2 Facebook Ads 17 1.3 Your Wall and Your Brand 21

Section 2 - Tie Your Profiles and Sites Together 24

Section 3 - The Viral Cycle 26 3.1 The Viral Cycle 26 The Engagement Funnel 27 Targeting 28 3.2 Growth 29 Ad Interest Targeting 30 3.3 Engagement 35 Sponsored Stories 36 Promoted Posts 37 3.4 Conversion 48 11 Killer Ways to Increase Facebook CTR 48 3.5 Optimization 50 Sponsored Results 50

Section 4 - Analytics 52 4.1 What's Your Brand Worth 52 4.2 Engagement 53 4.3 What's the Value of Your Fans? 58 4.4 Measuring Engagement 61 4.5 Social Media Health Check 63 4.6 The Engagement Funnel 64

Section 5 - Ads 65 5.1 How to Run an Effective Facebook Campaign for $5 65 5.2 Ad Targeting to Increase Traffic 71 5.3 Good Facebook Ads Stimulate 73 5.4 Optimization 74 5.5 Bid Optimization 80 5.6 Why B2B Marketing is Facebook’s Best Kept Secret 82

Section 6 - Apps 84

C O N T E N T S



15 Level Analyst System 89

Section 1 - Intro to Blitz 90 1.1 We Are Performance Marketers 90 1.2 What Makes Blitz Different? 92 1.3 Frequently Asked Questions for New Analysts 95 1.4 Analyst Support 98

Section 2 - Process Overview 99 2.1 How to Write a Strong Process 100 2.2 Creating a Proposal 103 2.3 After Acquiring a New Lead 104 2.4 Email Triggers 110

Section 3 - Employee Relations 116

Section 4 - Qualifying Clients 117

Section 5 - Enterprise Clients 118

Section 6 - Engineering 120 6.1 Process Checklist (for landing page or website) 120 6.2 Process for Listing a New Client in Directories 121 6.3 Automated and Manual Processes, and Systems Maintenance 122

Section7 - Ad Networks 127 7.1 Banner Ad Templates 127

Section 8 - The Blitz Process 129 8.1 New Analyst Welcome Note 129 8.2 Responding to Requests 131 8.3 Communicating With Clients 127 8.4 Most folks who ask for dashboards really need ads 138 8.5 Custom Dollar Sticker 139 8.6 Shredded Currency 141 8.7 Ad Creation 143 8.8 Creating a Dashboard 144 8.9 Custom Dashboard Skins 145 8.10 Custom Skin Implementation 147 8.11 Compiling Testimonials 149 8.12 Setting Up a New Project 150 8.13 Setting Up a New Project Under a Partner Company 151 8.14 Shutting Down a Project 152

Operations Process



Section 1 - Introduction 154 1.1 What is Internet Marketing 154 1.2 Why Use Blitz? 155 1.3 The Secret To Getting This Done 156 1.4 The Secret To Winning 158 1.5 Self-Service For Blitz Users 159

Section 2 - SEO For Beginners 160 2.1 What Is Real And What is Snake Oil 160 2.2 How To Do An Analysis - SEO in 12 Easy Steps 162 2.3 Doing a Solid Website Analysis 164 2.4 How To Write Great Articles To Generate Business For Your Clients 166 2.5 Blog Promotion 168 2.6 Helpful Analytics Tools 169

Section 3 - PPC For Beginners 174 3.1 Make Your Ads Better: Three Powerful Techniques 174 3.2 Optimizing Your PPC Campaign 177 3.3 Further Optimizing Your PPC Campaign 180 3.4 PPC Bid Rules and Optimization 185 3.5 The Largest Player in the Space Buys a PPC Company 188 3.6 Paid Search Automation: Choosing A Vendor 189

The Secrets of Online Marketing



The Social Impact

Leveraging Your Business 194

Ch. 1: Promoting Yourself in Social Media 194

Ch. 2: Multiply Like a Virus 200

Ch. 3: Anatomy 201 Pinterest 201 YouTube 202 Twitter 203 Instagram 204

Ch. 4: Twitter Friending Rules 205

Ch. 5: Google+ And The +1 Button... Should You Care? 207

Ch. 6: Further Promotion 210

Ch. 7: Advanced Analytics 212

Ch. 8: Why Your Social Analytics are Meaningless 217



Running Your Facebook Marketing Business

Section 1 - Responding to Leads 220 1.1 Follow Up 220 1.2 Not Knowing Info 222 1.3 Students 222 1.4 Agencies 222 1.5 Requesting Insights 223

Section 2 - Ad Accounts 224

Section 3 - How to Target B2B on Facebook 227 Section 4 - Facebook Marketing in the Travel & Leisure Industry 228 Section 5 - Managing Local on Facebook and Google 231 Section 6 - Facebook FAQ's 236 6.1 Getting Started With Facebook Ads FAQ 236 6.2 Conversion Report FAQ 238 6.3 Definitions 241 6.4 Domain Insights 245 6.5 Facebook How To's 246 6.6 Facebook Page vs. Profile 250 Section 7 - Common FAQ's 254 Section 8 - MySQL Notes 256 8.1 Channel-Specific Data 260 8.2 Social Media Data Schema 265 8.3 How to Get Tweets Pulled By Our Tracking 272 8.4 Page Related Queries and Tricks 273 8.5 Fan-Related Queries 275 Section 9 - Common Mistakes 276 Section 10 - Bonus Materials 278 Section 11 - Facebook for Your Further Education 279

About the Author 280


BlitzMetrics.com 1960 Joslyn Pl. Boulder, CO. 80304 CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY V2.91 800 485 4958 BlitzMetrics.com Facebook.com/blitzmetrics 718 SW Alder St. Ste 200, Portland, OR 97205

Facebook Training



As of March 30th, 2012, all Facebook business pages will be converted to the timeline profile. Here’s a look at the changes and how you can best utilize the new layout.

What's New?1. Facebook Timeline

2. Facebook Ads

3. Admin & Messages

Timeline & Wall Management

SECTION 1 - FACEBOOK TIMELINEAND WALL MANAGEMENT



Profile Image• Square image only• Needs to work alone• Needs to work well with cover image

Cover Photo• Always public• 851x315 pixels• No calls to action

Cover Images Must Be At Least 399 Pixels Wide and May NOT Contain:• Price or purchase information, such as "40% off" or "Download it at our website"• Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended

for your Page's About section• References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site featured• Calls to action, such as "get it now" or "tell you friends"

Cover

• No pricing/discounts• No "like" or "share"• No contact info


1.1 Facebook Timeline

How Timeline is Different1. Cover

2. Apps

3. Friend Activity

4. Pinned Posts

5. Larger Story Layouts

6. Milestones

• Everyone can preview now.

• All pages were converted to Timeline on March 30th 2012.



Apps

Apps• "Tabs" are now "Apps"• Thumbnails can now be edited• 111x74 pixel thumbnails• 1 pixel internal border

• New navigation above app• 810 pixels wide• NO DEFAULT LANDING TABS

• Photos display by default• # of Likes can be displayed• 3 apps decided by page• Up to 12 total apps in dropdown




Friend Activity

Pinned Posts

• Top right of timeline• # of friends that like a page• Sample of friends• Featured friend comments

• Top right of timeline• Up to 7 days• Calls to action encouraged• Can be treated by location

• Social proof• Shows to fans and non-fans• Tags not required




Larger Story Layouts

• Links• Photos• Photo albums• Video• Starred posts (highlighted)• Activity




Source: facebook.com/burberry

Edit post to highlight them (star), change date, hide, delete, or pin to top.


http://facebook.com/burberry



Milestones

• Similar to highlighted (starred) posts• Define the event, location, date,

story and image• Must create as page• Will create a date link on the

timeline sidebar




Offers

• Replaces "Deals"• In news feed• Can be a sponsored story• Redeem via email or mobile


1.2 Facebook Ads



3. Admin and Messages




Activity Log• Click Admin > Manage > Use Activity Log• All content, mentions, comments included• Filter by date or story type• View hidden posts, spam• Hide, delete, highlight, change date

• Manage content, users• Create ads• Share Facebook and email• Get insights• Request name change




Messages• Can be turned off by page• Fans and non-fans can message page• Reply in admin• Pages cannot message first




The key to successful brand marketing on Facebook is to produce and maintain engaging content to keep the Facebook page wall acting as an interactive forum. Facebook, and more specifically the Facebook Wall, offers a communal forum for brands to reach out and connect with Fans; the very same customers that support the brand and allow it to flourish. By posting interesting and exciting content to the Wall of a Facebook page, brands hope to attract new customers and retain existing customers. Facebook Walls offer an easy outlet for brands to post content that they do not or choose not to include in more traditional channels of marketing, such as television and print. One easy way to maintain this engagement is through Wall management. Wall Management consists of three intimately related aspects: Posting Content, Monitoring Engagement, and Rewarding Engagement.

1. Posting Content


Some social mechanics to understand: Brands can increase their impressions by growing their reach (the number of fans that see their messages) or their frequency (how many times, on average, a fan sees these messages).

The new timeline for pages heavily emphasizes pictures and open graph actions: Combine pictures and short text for maximum impact. The ideal post length is between 120 and 129 characters. If it's a question, keep it shorter, and no more than one post per day should be promotional.

Post length could easily affect the number of organic impressions. On average, page posts are 157.7 characters, while user posts are 121.5 characters and mobile posts average 104.9 characters. Posts between 140 and 159 characters long as, on aver-age, 13.3% less engaging than posts between 120 and 139 characters and 9% less engaging than posts between 100 and 119 characters. This demonstrates that the content many brands are competing against for a spot in the newsfeed, is more engaging and readable(Figure 1.7).

Changes in content type are hurting total coverage: Some types of content generate more impressions than other types. For example, status posts have weaker coverage, on average, at 29.1% for pages with fewer than 100,000 fans and 54.8% for pages with more than 100,000 fans (Figure 1.8).

We also see link coverage is decreasing, while status coverage is increasing. A post with a link in it is more likely to be a sales-oriented post, especially in December. If true, then the increase in link posts may very well tie with engagement dropping in December.

1.3 Your Wall and Your Brand



Any forum will inevitably feature benefactors and detractors, pros and cons. Respond to each quickly. Facebook Walls act as forums and should therefore be treated no different. For every handful of users who “Like” or “Comment” on a Wall post, there will be one who is posting negative comments that may be contextually inappropriate or superficially offensive. It should be the responsibility of Facebook Page Admins to monitor the Wall to make sure all user interaction is appropriate and not deterring present or future Fans from supporting the brand.

Monitoring Engagement Responsibilities • Checking the Wall for negative comments that are detrimental to the image of the Brand.• Checking the Wall for positive comments that are helping to increase engagement and drive traffic to the

Facebook Page. • Fast response time.

Being a social network, Facebook is a great marketing tool because it leverages User’s interests and influence to gain more fans and increase exposure. Facebook Page Admins can “Like” and “Comment” on Posts as well. It may help to think of Facebook Wall Management as a new media version of customer service. Responding to productive “Comments” and answering questions posed on the Wall are great ways to maintain that Brand/Fan engagement that is crucial to a successful Facebook Brand Page.

Above is an example of a User posing a question regarding a Special Contest that Lane Bryant is promoting. Lane Bryant quickly and succinctly responds to the query, just like any other form of traditional customer service. This quick response shows Fans that the brand they invest their own money and time in, cares about them as a customer and is willing to help answer questions and field concerns. Some brands have begun to “Reward” Users for their prolonged engagement to their Facebook Page. “Rewarding” high-engagement users with gift certificates, coupons, or other special offers is a great way for Brands to further drive traffic and engagement to their Facebook page. Fans who are posting repeatedly to the Wall with content that is engaging other Fans and actively supporting the brand deserve to be rewarded for helping to sustain engagement, thus helping drive traffic.

2. Monitoring Engagement

3. Rewarding Engagement


Targeted

Reach

Social Reach



Rewarding Engagement Responsibilities• Rewarding engagement is an extension of monitoring the positive comments that are appearing on the

Wall.

• Rewarding Engagement consists of taking note of the Users who are the most interactive on the page. Identify active individual Users by noting how often an individual User posts on the wall, “likes” a post, or “comments” on a post during a span of 30 days.

• If it is determined that an individual User is extremely active on the Brand’s Facebook Wall, this User should be noted so as to monitor further activity, and be possibly rewarded.

• Once highly active Users have been identified, coordination with the Brand is crucial to determine if the User is worthy of a coupon or special promotion. Transparency between Blitz and the client is of the utmost importance, so as to not make false guarantees.

What could be decreasing your organic impressions? For one, post length could easily affect the number of organic impressions. One average, page posts are 157.7 characters, while user posts are 121.5 characters and mobile posts average 104.9 characters. Posts between 140 and 159 characters long as, on average, 13.3% less engaging than posts between 120 and 139 characters and 9% less engaging than posts between 100 and 119 characters. This demonstrates that the content many brands are competing against for a spot in the news feed, is more engaging and readable (Figure 1.7).




If you’re promoting something you’re already an expert in, tie your blog to your page. Social media only works when people can see what you have to say, and the more places you’re able to show it off, the better. There’s a reason why Facebook is the leading social network on the web – it’s just so versatile. They’ve provided an easy way for you to link your blog to your pages wall. Check out these steps:

1. Log into Facebook, and go to the main Notes application page by typing “Notes” into the search box at the top of the screen.

2. On the left-hand side is Notes Settings, click the "Edit import setting" link.

3. For the Web URL field, enter the RSS/Atom feed address for your blog, agree to the terms, then click "Start Importing".

Profiles & Sites

SECTION 2 - TIE YOUR PROFILES AND SITES TOGETHER



4. Make sure that the feed imported correctly, and click "Confirm Import".

See? Not hard at all. It’s easy to get the word out about things like Michael Jackson’s funeral arrangements and free funeral advice. Now your Facebook page is automatically kept up to date with your blog posts!

Cross promote your profiles on all networks, chances are your friends use other social networks as well. Think of each connection as another possible source for people to see what you’re talking about. Don’t just think about multiplying by yourself – There’s a reason why it’s called Viral Marketing.

If you find yourself writing an email that could just as easily be turned into a blog post, why not do it? We have a couple folks that format blog posts, too. My blog posts take only a few minutes to write. I just write an email and then they format it, look for funny pictures, stick in links, and so forth. Thus, when you might be thinking - “I don’t have an hour to mess with writing a blog post”, instead, you say “Oh, ten minutes? No problem - let me crank one out real quick.” Consider the bang for the buck that is possible.

CONCLUSION: It pays to reduce the time and effort required when you want to get a message out.

Profiles & Sites



3.1 The Viral Cycle

Social ads are about amplifying user actions, not broadcasting creative.

When you amplify your own content, you are able to activate fans that may have joined the page a long time ago, but haven't heard from you since, plus increase the feedback rate on content (likes + comments).

People make decisions based on the trust of their friends. It doesn't matter what the marketing channel is.

What Facebook has done is create a layer — a social layer that exposes those relationships that have always been there, between people's real friends. Because those relationships are visible, think of all these dots with lines connecting them. This created an advertising system that sits on top of that and allows you to inject your content.

Now let's say your content is testimonials, specials, videos of procedures, whatever kinds of content might be interesting. Identify who your best customers are; not people who could be customers, but people who already love you. Amplify what you already have that's great. That's what Facebook is; it's a word of mouth amplifier.

SECTION 3 - THE VIRAL CYCLE

The Viral Cycle



Manage against the stages of theengagement funnel and ads, apps, analytics.

T H E E N G A G E M E N T F U N N E L

If you don’t have a goal, then all roads look as good as any other.

To say you want “greater awareness” or “deeper engagement” is not enough. You need to have quantifiable goals based on a reasonable set of short, medium, and long-term targets. But that requires understanding a few things.

• What IS the right number of fans to have? • What is a healthy level of engagement? • How am I doing versus my competitors? • If I’m a direct marketing company, can

I really drive revenue, and if so — how much and how does this play with my other channels?

Top Funnel References

1. Adidas2. ComScore Power of the Like 23. AmEx Small Biz Saturday4. Kia5. O26. Sony Pictures

The Viral Cycle

http://www.scribd.com/doc/97378911/Adidas-Football-Facebook-Ad-Case-Study

http://www.scribd.com/doc/96831365/3799644-the-power-of-like-2-1

http://www.scribd.com/doc/97390173/American-Express-Facebook-Ad-Case-Study

http://www.scribd.com/doc/97390210/Kia-Facebook-Ad-Case-Study

http://www.scribd.com/doc/97381447/O2-Facebook-Ad-Case-Study

http://www.scribd.com/doc/97475060



Define Your Audiences by Value and Size:

T A R G E T I N G

VA

LUE

HIG

HLO

W

SIZELOW HIGH

• Fans of competitors• Page post ads to fans

• Broad category targets• Demographic targeting

Geo-targeted traditional ads

• Page like ads• The media

• Interest targets

• Promoted posts

• Friend of fan targets

Social media success is about pinpoint precision targets. We’re simulating the one-on-one conversations that friends have among themselves.

• Workplace and job titles• Promoted results• Mobile placements• B2B targets

The Viral Cycle



3.2 Growth

Social Analytics Is About Context

Traditional web analytics has always been about just your site — your traffic, which focused on number of hits, inbound referrals, conversion rates, and all kinds of activities that occur just in your patch of land. But the majority of social interactions occur in public — on ground that is not exclusively yours.

A user’s news feed is a shared space where friends, brands, events, and other objects interact. You don’t own them, you can’t easily tag them, and you can’t barge into the conversation and force them to hang out only at your place so you can cookie them.

Don’t be “that guy” who has poor social etiquette. Brand marketers are like bums with cardboard signs that walk into strangers’ houses pushing their products and asking for money. If you are reporting on your social channels just like your paid search channels, odds are this is you.

Paid search assumes that people are ready to buy — they had to initiate a search to demonstrate intent. In social, there is no such thing. What gets measured gets managed. Or another way to say it is, “if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.

The metrics in social should be around share of voice, engagement levels, fan quality, influence, and the lift to other conversion channels.

DIFFERENT ANGLES TO MEASURE ENGAGEMENT

People Talking About This (PTAT): Total number of people who have had a brand-

related action show up in their news feed.

Coverage: Total number of impressions per 1,000 fans.

Unique Reach: Total number of people seeing impressions.

Engagement Rate: Percent of people who saw a post who commented or liked.

The Viral Cycle



Laser target ads down to specific interest targets(including geographic locations).

Facebook rewards high relevancy by discounting the price you pay for traffic.

We know that relevancy leads to high CTR, leading to a lower CPC, which leads, in turn, to a lower cost per fan and lower cost per conversion. Throughout a campaign, test different interest targets to optimize effectiveness.

Interest Targeting Count

Internet 2,718,000

Computer 1,959,060

Technology 1,178,760

Laptop 906,720

Competitor Targeting CountGoogle 2,861,280Yahoo! 2,198,180

AOL 453,980

Skype 206,440

Lateral Targeting CountBlog 2,081,280

Online Chat 1,269,080

Newspaper 491,640

Instant Messaging 39,180

Literal Targeting: What are the direct interests related to your brand?

Competitive Targeting:Who are your competitors?

Lateral Targeting:Who are these people? What kind of things are they interested in?

PRO TIP: Ego ads

Create one page post ad that is targeted just at folks who like your company, plus one page post ad against those who are fans of your page but live in your headquarters city. These are “ego ads” to appease your colleagues and the executives.

For those of us who run Google PPC ads, this is the “ego campaign” for pesky executives that want to make sure that we’re “showing up” on Google for a set of keywords, even if those keywords are unprofitable.

A D I N T E R E S T T A R G E T I N G

The Viral Cycle



Micro-Targeted Ads

How much should you spend? Depends on your goals. We take a 3 layered approach: to grow your audience, engage them, and convert them.Your Facebook ad budget should be 15-20% of your total digital budget and mirror the campaign structures of other marketing channels.

Fan Acquisition Cost is number of fans x cost per fan

Fan Nurturing (engagement) is fan base x 0.5 cents per fan per month

Conversion Cost: target CPA x number of conversions required

TOTAL:

MONTHLY BUDGET

Campaigns drive conversions or sales.Always on and visually represents about 20% of the budget or growing slightly. Fan engagement budgets are directly proportionate to how many fans we have to nurture.

Fan EngagementIn spurts but still always on. The fan growth phase is about 50% when on and down to 7% when in lulls.

Fan Growth Campaigns

January February March April May June July August September October November December

Fall Contest

Ad Spend

Summer Promotion

Campaigns drive conversions or sales.Always on and visually represents about 20% of the budget or growing slightly. Fan engagement budgets are directly proportionate to how many fans we have to nurture.

Fan EngagementIn spurts but still always on. The fan growth phase is about 50% when on and down to 7% when in lulls.

Fan Growth Campaigns

January February March April May June July August September October November December

Fall Contest

Ad

Spen

d

Summer Promotion

The Viral Cycle



Most of the pages you come across suffer from terrible engagement rates. They eagerly grew a lot of fans in 2010 but forgot about what to do with these fans. Allowed to go stale, these fans never see the brand again. The brand may post to the wall multiple times per day, but not have high enough EdgeRank score to qualify for showing up in the News Feed (the user’s home page). The solution is to use the ads platform to reconnect with these fans and to run ads so targeted, even non-fans will respond.

Ad Targeting to Increase Feedback

PRO TIP: Always run combos to amplify follow-on engagement

Don’t make the mistake of going for pure audience growth and then letting your new fans die. Conversely, don’t go for conversion right out the gate without having engagement ads. That results in one-off conversions at high cost without building social community or the word of mouth effect.

The Viral Cycle



Interests

Media & Press

Workplaces & Job Titles

Interest and Group Targeting

Your ads should always be targeted, else they risk not seeming both relevant and personal.

The Viral Cycle



We recommend 4 blocks in your ad name: <client_name>, <type_of_ad>, <targeting>, <creative_description.

Facebook doesn’t provide previews on targeting in Power Editor or the ad interface. Plus, when you download your ad performance, you’ll want to be able to create pivot tables to group performance by any of these attributes.

For example, let’s say we’re running an ad on behalf of Rosetta Stone, that it’s a Sponsored Result ad, we’re targeting folks who like the BBC and are friends of fans, and we’re sending to the 1 million fan celebration landing page tab. We’d name it:rosetta_sr_bbc-fof_1mm_celebration

Or maybe we’re the Treasure Island casino running ads to enhance our post visibility against fans of the Wynn, Venetian, Palazzo, and other properties. We’d name it:ti_ppa_competitors_ongoing

We like to use underscores to separate each variable, so it’s easy to import into Excel or your favorite tool. If you have multiple items in a block, use hyphens (treasure-island, for example), so you don’t mess up your importing.

For ad type, use these:sr: sponsored result (search ads)ppa: page post adspl: page like adsppl: page post like adscheckin: check-in adsapp-used: app used adstrad: traditional ads (sending off-site, requiring a headline, image, body, and url)

Ad Naming Conventions

PRO TIP: Set up one campaign per ad

Normally, you’d group all ads by objective and have them live in a campaign. However, Facebook’s Quality Score algorithm is not as sophisticated. So by having one ad per campaign, you get greater unique reach, a higher CTR, and a lower CPC.

When Facebook introduces ad rotation and is smarter about eCPM estimation, you’ll be able to treat social campaigns like ad groups in traditional CPC. But for now, you’ll have to deal with having many campaigns, so have a smart naming convention

The Viral Cycle



If you're an administrator of your brand's Facebook page, you can access Insights. Here are 2 key metrics to determine your engagement:

What percentage of your fans are interacting with you? Is it under 1%? If so, then your fans are saying your messages are not interesting. Facebook, noticing this, will also not share your messages with friends — a double whammy.

Improve your score here by asking questions as opposed to making statements, keeping messages 10 words long or less (versus a paragraph), including multimedia versus just text, and having content that triggers emotion. Above all, resist the temptation to sell too hard.

The wall is where most engagement occurs, although you can boost your engagement rate by running ads to your postings, plus including engagement apps.

Interactions per week looks at how many interactions you have. Underpost and you have no community. Overpost and you wear users out. Your ideal post frequency is dependent upon what your users expect.

If you’re a news site, then 10 times a day can be okay. If you’re a B2B software company, a few times a week is probably fine. Do not cheat by auto-posting your RSS and Twitter entries — fans will frown upon non-social, automated content. Don’t promote your specials or discounts more than once in every 4 postings, and definitely no more than once per day.

If you are getting less than 10% of your fan base as interactions each week, you’re not unlocking the value of your community. Thus, if you have 100,000 fans, you should have at least 10,000 interactions each week.

1. Feedback Rate

2. Interactions Per Week

Measuring Engagement

3.3 Engagement

The Viral Cycle



Ensure your messages get into the news feed

S P O N S O R E D S T O R I E S

Amplify your organic content and positive fan behavior via Sponsored Stories.

The Viral Cycle

Sponsored Story - Page Likes Sponsored Story - Page Posts

Your message amplified

Friends who’ve liked your Page are displayed.


The Page can be liked right from the ad.


Your latest Page post is displayed as a Sponsored Story.



Spend $7 to promote your personal status to friends

P R O M O T E D P O S T S

Pay to get your posts more visibility in the news feed.

The Viral Cycle



We can target contextually

On posts with high engagement, amplify whenever possible.



Social Ads That Engage and Convert

Configure the right mix of Sponsored Story ad units against your chosen goals.

Publishes the latest Page post as a Sponsored Story.

Displays the user’s friends who have already liked your page.

In the last month your App or game was used by someone at least twice or for 10 minutes.

In the last week someone used Facebook Places to check in and/or claimed a deal at one of your claimed Places.

Your page was liked either on Facebook directly or on a Like Box on a separate site.

Friends of your fans.

All of the people who have liked your Page.

Friends of your fans who have liked your posts.

Friends of the people who have used the App or played the game.

Friends of people who checked in or claimed a Deal.

Story Type Story Content Who Sees It

Page Like

Page Post Like

Page Post Story

App Uses / Game Played

Check-In

The Viral Cycle



Current Ad: Suggested Revision:

Note that I didn’t mention in the ad that they’re a dog lover. I believe that can safely be assumed because of the image. In some cases, where the image is not able to represent the interest, we do want to explicitly call out the interest target.

Using your Merchant Name in the ad is a double-edged sword. In this case, I believe we shouldn’t use it because the merchant doesn’t have brand awareness. Remember, to get a click from people who don’t know us, we must establish trust quickly — and no brand is no trust. Using the long brand name also lengthens the ad copy and makes it slightly harder to understand the value proposition.

Social media requires the lowest of conversion hurdles (the minimum of thought or consideration). Since people are on Facebook to socialize, I advocate the two-step conversion for most clients — one set of ads to get the right interest targets to be fans, then another set of ads targeted just at fans. True, it costs more to run more ads, but the prices are so low on Facebook ads that we can get away with this. Plus, depending on the nature of the product or service — hitting people at different points in the funnel can be far more effective than going for a jump all the way through to conversion in one leap.

A good rule of thumb is a 3X improvement on ads when you optimize them. In other words, if your cost per fan is 60 cents when you test the first couple days, you should be able to get it down to 20 cents on average. The 3X rule is what we’ve discovered is reasonably possible with a moderate amount of testing - of course, you could get far more.

* Liking as a condition of entry is not allowed, but many brands do it. Proceed at your own risk.

Ad Copy Techniques

Determining Who Is The Winner

If we have 3 images - which of them performs better? By “perform”, I mean by the goal we’re being measured on, as well as early indicators (CTR and CPC). If we have 3 interest targets, how do they perform? Or maybe we have a few age/sex/location targets. Unless we have multiple variations of each ad multiplied, it will be hard to isolate a winner and isolate the performance of a single variable.

The Viral Cycle



Geographic Split Test

FOF (Friend of Fan) andNon-FOF Ads Split Test

Run one ad that is not FOF and another that is, just so we can get an apples-to-apples comparison. In other words, the ads are identical except for this targeting change. This is called an A/B test and we want to determine the differences in CTR, CPC, etc... Don’t let it run more than a couple hundred dollars in total — or enough to have a significant difference.

The Viral Cycle



Demographic Optimization

If you have an interest target that is already highly skewed towards a particular demographic (combination of age, and gender), then it’s not necessary to also filter by demographics, too. For example, if you are targeting New England Patriots fans (folks who like a professional football team), it’s not necessary to specify males as a demographic. If you do, that will cut out 20% of the audience, as there are still some females that will like this.

Therefore, when setting up initial ads that have interest targets, demo targeting is usually not necessary. But in subsequent refinement, you might want to multiply into combinations of these demographics. The Demographic reports in Facebook’s ad tool will tell us that the CTR or conversion rate may differ or not.

PRO TIP: Combination targeting

If you want to give moderately performing ads a boost and if the existing target audience is large, use combination targeting. Duplicate the existing ad (use Power Editor if you have more than 3 or 4 ads to duplicate) and add in another filter for demographics, cut down the number of interests you are targeting — or my favorite, use specific and broad category targeting together.

Often an audience of 200,000 that goes down to 20,000 will double your CTR. And adding in irrelevant interest targeting of any sort will often give you a CTR boost, since the fact that these users like anything means they’re more likely to like you. People who like pages have almost 300 friends, while the average Facebook user has 130 friends. So you get a boost in influence, too.

Fan Targeting

Non-FanTargeting

Friend of FanTargeting

Your friend is attending, how about you?

Segmentation

The Viral Cycle



Brand Logo On The Ad Image

Interest Targeting - Friends of Fans Targeting 1

Cold Targeting vs. Fans TargetingFor many large brands, often the highest CTR

and lowest CPC/CPF is the brand image itself. Thus, if we could make the logo larger, it could increase the CTR. Maybe even try a colored border, provided that the client approves this.

When you do interest targeting, you don’t always have to put in a gender filter, too. For example, if you specify “cooking”, you don’t have to necessarily also place “female” as a gender target. There are some men who like cooking as well. To see how the counts change, try the targeting in the ads interface with and without female targeting — you’ll see only a minor difference. The reason is that most of the folks who like cooking are female.

Average CTR of ads to non-fans: .05%

Average CTR of ads to fans: .35%


Have you ever considered doing pure FOF targeting in cities/states where your brand is strong?

For instance, let’s say you’re running a campaign for a fast food chain in California cities since the location density is much lower than the rest, say cities in New Mexico. The lower the people/location figure, the better we’ll do, as the people seeing the ads are more likely to have a location near them. In addition, online ads should follow offline popularity as a tactic to increase conversion.

The Viral Cycle




Ad Distribution

Choose interest that has at least 1,000 population reach. When doing FOF, the estimated reach should be at least 10,000 but even if only 500, it’s worth doing, you’ll just have to create a LOT of them.

3 Types of Audience Reach:

Targeted: Based on the targeting you’ve selected, this is an approximate number of people your ads and Sponsored Stories can reach.

Reach: The number of individual people who saw your ads or Sponsored Stories.

Social Reach: The number of people who saw your ad or Sponsored Story with the names of their friends who liked your Page, RSVPed to your event, or used your app. If you are running ads off Facebook, you won’t be able to see the social reach.

Ad Multiplication

Try our top ads with FOF Like cooking?, Like [interest]?

For example, target “food network” and say “Like Cooking Shows?” Target “Bobby Flay” and say “Like Grilling?” If you create enough of them, you can do FOF targets, too FOF significantly limits reach, of course, but the trade-off is better CTR and conversion.

Learn how to put your Facebook sponsored stories on steroids! http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-sponsored-likes-2012-02

The Viral Cycle




Ad Burn Out

It may be that if you run an ad that was semiburned out, but gave it time to “rest”, it gets a light refresh.

A good predictor of ad burnout is not just the trendline for CTR, CPC, and CPF, but also looking at the audience size each ad targets. The smaller the base, the fewer number of impressions needed to burn out.

I’m saying that if the audience base is small, it takes fewer impressions total to burn out. For example, an ad that targets 100k people can serve a lot more impressions before burnout than one with only 1k people in the target. Smaller audiences might not burn out faster in terms of number of days, since they will also show fewer impressions per day. Therefore, in estimating future traffic and our ability to hit fan targets at CPF goals, we should account for audience size. Assume we can hit users 20 times before burnout on average. So if the audience is 100k people, we can serve 2mm impressions.

Audience size matters especially in local. If some campaign wants 100k fans in just Atlanta vs nationwide, it will be a lot more expensive because we hit burnout faster - there are fewer people to target. We get saturated faster. In large multiplied local campaigns, whether for a franchise or a single location, we have to consider the bounds of each geo-target. This is true is regular PPC, too. ReachLocal has a traffic eliminator built into their proposal generator, which I’ve shared a few times. Buggy - a good concept, but poorly implemented.

PRO TIP: Max the bid on small audiences

If you have an audience less than 1,000 people (maybe 50,000 people for large advertisers), you sometimes have to force the bid to get traffic. Facebook’s eCPM estimator isn’t good at estimating which advertiser’s ad will perform, so the high bid sends a strong signal. We will often bid $10 a click, knowing that the price is often going to be pennies. This is especially useful when doing competitive targeting (where you know the traffic is high quality) and workplace targeted ads (where the audience is highly valuable).

Facebook doesn’t reveal average position of your ads yet, so a top bid gets the highest placement and higher CTR, too.

The Viral Cycle



If you are bidding CPM and care about CTR, then never allow your bid to be below the suggested bid. If you do, Facebook will certainly give you impressions, but against the lowest quality audiences at the bottom of the page.

If you bid CPC, Facebook will seek out which combination of demographics and position will generate the most clicks, since they’re paid on clicks. If the audience is small, as mentioned earlier, you should do an extremely high CPM or CPC bid. If you expect a low CTR, then bid CPC.

Facebook allows you to now automatically bid based on likelihood of a user to become a fan or click on your story. If you choose this, you cannot select a CPM or CPC bid. Against audiences over 100,000, we find their algorithm to be highly effective. But test and see for yourself.

The Latest on Bidding Strategies

The Viral Cycle



Education Level Impacts CTR

Competitive Targeting

Want to know how one small business saw 603% growth from effectively using sponsored stories? Click here.

The Viral Cycle

http://www.dennis-yu.com/603-growth-fromsponsored- stories-what-one-small-biz-learned



Like AdWords, in Facebook the #1 factor governing your CPC is your Click-Through Rate (CTR). While Facebook doesn’t reveal your ad or keyword Quality Score, you bet that it makes a huge difference.

1. Ask a question in the adNot only will this drive in-line likes (fans), but encourages participation. Consider asking them if they like you or the interest you’re targeting — but make sure you’re still relevant or you’ll be disapproved.

2. Write short ad copySure you can use up all 135 characters in the body and 25 characters in the headline, but odds are that people won’t read it all. This is Facebook — people are likely not conducting serious business, so make it light and easy.

3. Use a close-up face in your imageSmiling is better, as well as looking directly at you. This is FACEbook, so use FACEs in your ads.

4. Personalize the imageIf they’re a 45 year old white female in the Bible Belt, we’re not going to show an urban teenager rocking out. People usually convert better when the ad model is closer to them — the exception is dating and beauty products. Baby products can be like that, too. Whatever the case, test it. We know if they’re married or not on Facebook and can even guess their race — so that is something you can personalize the image with.

5. Capitalize a couple wordsSaying FREE is not okay in AdWords, but we see it all the time in Facebook. You might try it.

6. Use numbers and unusual charactersThis works in regular PPC, too. And if you make a claim — don’t say “We can help you save money on insurance.” Don’t even say “We can save you 15% on your insurance.” You need to be more specific — “Save 17.3% in just 3 minutes!”

7. Stimulate emotion”You’ll be sorry. That’s what you’ll say if you miss Portland Honda’s Labor Day blowout sale!” Arouse curiosity. Message it as if it was a personal friend talking to a personal friend — “Doris, you wouldn’t believe the sale at Luckys on hotdogs this weekend.”

Relevancy leads to high CTR, leading to a lower CPC, which leads, in turn, to a lower cost per fan and lower cost per conversion.

11 Killer Ways to Increase Your Facebook CTR

3.4 Conversion

The Viral Cycle



8. Send users to your Facebook pageThis is where custom tabs, especially a reveal tab or engagement app positively rules.

9. Follow through on the promise on the landing pageAlmost nobody does right — if you see it done right, please let me know. In PPC, we know that we must tightly map the keyword to the ad to the landing page. That means if someone is looking for patio furniture, we don’t say “cheap furniture” and dump them on our home page. But that’s what most folks do in Facebook — send everyone to exactly the same page, as opposed to differing landing pages based on what’s targeted in the interests and ads.

10. DaypartingWe run Facebook campaigns for a number of food companies. I suppose you could promote breakfast foods at night, but why would you? Consider how time of day may affect the messaging as well as the type of user you see. For example, if you’re selling cold and flu medication, you might run ads between midnight and 6 am saying “If you were using X, you’d be sound asleep right now.” By the way, dayparting is not a feature in Facebook yet, so we had to build our own.

11. Fan targetingOnce you have all these fans, you have to keep the conversation going. The fan targeting won’t give you much volume, but I’ll bet it has the highest CTR of any ads you run. It’s the equivalent of social retargeting.

Read the entire article here.

The Viral Cycle

http://www.ppcsummit.com/newsletter/google-adwords/11-killer-ways-to-increase-your-facebook-ctr/



S P O N S O R E D R E S U L T S

You might have noticed, when searching on Facebook for a brand page, that other related companies show up in the search results.

Facebook rolled out sponsored results in August, for those with ads application-programming interface or power editor access. Here are some of the basics you need to know about this new feature:

• The performance is stupidly good Click-through rates are in the range of 3 percent to 10 percent, and cost per click is between 1 cent and 10 cents. Thus, you’re getting the same CTR as newsfeed or mobile ads, but paying the price of marketplace traffic — those seven ads on the right side that might command CPMs (cost per thousand views) of 60 cents to $1, depending on your targeting.

• You can pretty much forget about interest targeting The volumes are so small that if you filter down further by gender, location, or whatever else, you won’t have any traffic left. With search, you’re only showing up when someone types in that page, as opposed to whether they’re a fan or just talking about it in their status. Even with all of these search terms, called “targeted entities,” that in total have a couple of million fans between them, you are only reaching 4,220 people in this example.

The Viral Cycle

3.5 Optimization

What's the skinny on the new Sponsored Results?



• Brand bidding is nice If you’re Coke, you bid on Pepsi. But you could also bid on any product or brand that is related — McDonald’s french fries, the local sports team, music videos, or something completely irrelevant. For example, you could set up a script to automatically geotarget any city that is over 90 degrees today, then choose the biggest search targets, related or not. Show your 70-character message of “Hot in <city_name>? How about some refreshment!”

• Perfect for the small guys If you’re a small brand, you can bid on the well-known brand. It’s a David and Goliath strategy. Just be aware that people who search in that box are actually navigating, so your message better be persuasively distracting. I wouldn’t necessarily mention your competitor. Likewise, if you’re the big guy, you better bid on your own name to protect it, right?

• 70 characters of awesome Make sure it’s related to the search term. Ask a question. Choose your default landing page — perhaps your email registration page that has your re-targeting code on it (for those at advanced levels of sneakiness). Create one ad per target, since creating 100 ads is as easy as copy and paste in power editor. Why not?

• Bid high Or just choose “optimized CPM,” which lets Facebook guess what is enough to get the spot. It doesn’t really matter, since right now, CTRs are super-high for the novelty factor and because few advertisers are using it. You’re likely to be in the first spot. You’re going to get clicks for pennies. If you’re not getting traffic for 90 percent off, tell me, since you’re doing something wrong.

Read the entire article here.

The Viral Cycle

http://allfacebook.com/get-the-most-from-facebooks-sponsored-results_b99136



The most common question clients have about Facebook is how to measure ROI or what a Facebook fan is worth. A great way to demonstrate how our valuation and measurement techniques work, is to answer these questions.

The value of your brand on Facebook is a function of the number of fans you have multiplied by the value of your fan. If you have twice as many fans, then your presence is worth twice as much. Likewise, if you can double the value of a fan, then you double your brands value as well. If you have 50,000 fans and your fans are worth $10 each, then your Facebook presence is worth half a million dollars.

Let’s start with your fan count.A common question is, "How many fans should I have on Facebook?" That depends on two factors — how you rank relative to other companies in your industry, and how much traffic your website receives. Your BlitzMetrics Fan Page Score shows how you fare against peers in your industry, based on publicly available data, using the industry classifications of the Fortune 1000. By the way, the average Fortune 1000 company has 62,141 fans, which includes Starbucks at 13 million and various B2B brands at only a few thousand. How do you compare?

Facebook, at nearly a billion users, now accounts for about 7% of unique visits on web properties in the US, which is just slightly above Google. Look in your analytics to see how much traffic you are getting from Google versus Facebook. If your Facebook traffic is less than Google, it means that you’re not getting your proportionate share of traffic. Further, because average session time on Facebook is over triple that of Google, even having your Facebook profile on par with Google, may still mean you’re under optimized.

4.1 What's Your Brand Worth

Analytics

SECTION 4 - ANALYTICS



Here are some of the engagement flags and what they mean in your social scoring report.

Custom Tab:

It is nearly impossible to build meaningful relationships with customers via the Wall, which is a streaming flow of the latest things people have to say. It’s graffiti. A custom tab allows you to insert a landing page, play a video, collect their email address, create a quiz, buy something, share with friends, or other activity. To not have engagement apps is to disappoint consumers who expect to be able to interact with you and also be entertained. It also means that Facebook’s EdgeRank will effectively silence you — as lively conversations are promoted and inactive players are not seen.

Allow Fans to Post:

The default setting of your page is to show posts by the page only - you. That means if a fan wants to post something, it cannot be easily seen by others. This is the default setting because most brands are not able to monitor page activity in the same way they might staff up their call center or support desks. To shut out your fans is to tell them their participation is not welcome. This is one of the easiest settings to change. But doing so then requires vigilance to respond to what fans have to say.

4.2 Engagement

Analytics



The Like Button

The Like button visuallycreates desire

Viral Loop

Shares a link in the newsfeed Discussion increases reach

Analytics



Website "Like" Button

Most brands have a link to their Facebook page from the company website. But what they often miss is the like button — it's not a static link, but an intelligent button that tells users whether they are a fan or not, as well as which of their friends are fans of the page, too.

Folks who visit your website can become fans of your page without ever having to go to Facebook - they can click “like” right there. This “instant socialization” is far more powerful than just pasting in a blue F logo on your site. Further, the XFBML version of the like button will post user comments to their wall and show up on friends walls. You can also pass an “interest” variable in your like buttons and then target ads based on that interest. Which version of the like button do you have?

Reveal Tab

TARGET

Local Customers

APPSADS

A reveal tab is a custom tab that shows whether the user is a fan or not. It shows one type of content to those who are fans and something else to those who are not. The most common reveal tabs say “click like to get exclusive discounts”, “click like to watch an exclusive video, “click like to show your support”, or some other enticement.

We see that conversion rates can be as high as 80% on these custom tabs, since users are now accustomed to click "like" to get something in return. If you have compelling content, perhaps a funny video or an attractive coupon, a reveal tab will be quite effective for you. Your fan page value is based upon how many of these flags are set to true, as well as the level of engagement of your page. The engagement of your page is how often you post, what share of users are interacting with you, and whether you are able to attract interaction via a comment or a like.

Analytics



This reveal tab converted in the 20-50% range - low relative to fast food, but good for a $500+ considered software package. What makes this special is how the reveal tab extends upon the promise of the ad copy; that you can learn a new language for free. By testing ads and landing pages together, in the same way that ad copy and landing page combos work in PPC, clients have found that a lower conversion rate is worth the trade-off for higher quality. Using ad imagery that mirrors that of landing pages gives users a smoother experience, especially when reinforcing the trademark yellow, in this particular case.

This brand may have the most fans of any CPG page because of their emphasis on featuring the fan. Giving users each their proverbial 5 minutes of fame by being the“World’s Fan of the Week” is one of the most effective ways of driving viral likes. The incentives of a free ringtone and game dynamic drive great engagement. Facebook recently relaxed their contest rules to no longer require permission from an account manager or have an ad budget of at least $10k. Expect more contests in 2011 as a result.

Lane Bryant is the leading retailer for plus size women’s clothing. Their Facebook page capitalizes upon their offline brand strength, leveraging the same imagery and offers found in their print catalog and in-store marketing units. The $250 gift card is a sufficiently strong prize. As JVC demonstrated in their contest, many small prizes are more effective than one big prize, because it allows for the contest to build momentum. Two lessons: make sure your offline and social presences are in synch, and find ways to elevate your users.

Rosetta Stone

Lane Bryant

Levi's

Oreo

Elements of Reveal Tabs

The pre-like page should have a blurred out version of that first chart, because the key to a landing page conversion (whether on Facebook or anywhere on the internet) is to give users a clear visual idea of what they will get if they take action. The more real the reward and more clearly they can see what they’ll get, the more likely they will convert.

• Big arrow pointing to the "Like" button.• Don't put the "Like button image on the tab because people might get confused and click on it.

Examples:

Levi’s has built 2.7 million fans by integrating Facebook “like” buttons strongly with their site to encourage user feedback that goes from the site to the Facebook page and vice-versa. Their page has a comment wall below the main image, which is effective for national brands of sufficient size. If you don’t have a brand of significant recognition (ask 100 random people at a mall and see if 50 people have heard of your brand) and also have at least 100,000 fans, the comment wall might not be effective for you. Judge your social reach and decide whether you can get away with this. If you’re big enough, as we see with Carl’s Jr, you might not even need a strong graphic pointing to the like button.

Analytics



Driving Ads to the Wall Post Increases Fan Engagement

When you amplify your own content, you are able to activate fans that may have joined the page a long time ago, but haven't heard from you since, plus increase the feedback rate on content (likes + comments).

A higher engagement rate increases EdgeRank and thus, drives greater News Feed visibility. While Google has a “church and state” separation between ads and organic, this is not true with Facebook, nor should it be in social channels. Items that have a higher engagement rate among your friends, whether driven by ads or not, deserve to be shown to friends of interactors. Who doesn’t want to know what their friends are doing and what they like?

You can drive ads to a specific wall post by choosing that wall post url or you can just use Sponsored Post Stories, which does it automatically for you.

Facebook cites 900 million objects (events, pages, community pages, and groups) that users can interact with on Facebook. In addition, there are 36.2 million user actions per hour showing up in the newsfeed.

Newsfeed Competition:

DIFFERENT ANGLES TO MEASURE ENGAGEMENT

People Talking About (PTA): Total number of people who have had a brand-related action show up in their news feed.

Coverage: Total number of impressions per 1,000 fans.

Unique Reach: Total number of people seeing impressions.

Engagement Rate: Percent of people who saw a post who commented or liked.

Analytics



4.3 What's the Value of Your Fans?

The beauty of the e-commerce and lead gen model is that it's simple to measure the ROI of your Facebook presence. You need only conversion tracking that accounts for the impact of ALL marketing efforts, not just the last thing a customer did prior to converting.

EARNED MEDIA: If you are a Consumer Packaged Goods brand or one that interactswith customers via retain channels, then earned media value is most accurate to determine value.

Sometimes a Facebook presence can actually hurt your brand. Witness Dell: when they didn’t tend to their wall, allowing unhappy customers and ex-employees to post dozens of comments with no response from Dell. Just like vandalism, this is visible publicly to anyone, but it also represents an opportunity for Dell to demonstrate they care. Note: since we pointed this out, to their credit, Dell has taken corrective action.

Analytics



1. Discounted Cash Flow (DCF)

Discounted Cash Flow is the most revered technique since it’s the closest to real profit and not subject to stock market manias. Thus, BlitzMetrics can pixel the conversion page of a website to capture not only the conversion, but whether they are a Facebook fan or not. If so, assign credit. Then calculate what percentage of conversions are Facebook fans and what the average conversion value is for Facebook fans vs non Facebook fans.

Now you have a real Facebook fan value by taking checkout value of the Facebook fan times what percentage of Facebook fans buy (survey randomly on all site users who is a fan or not compared to purchasers who are fans or not). Indisputable value which can then be plugged into our grading tool to override the default fan value.

You can measure how many impressionsyour Facebook page is generating.

For example, if you are generating 100,000 impressions per day via your wall posts and your cost of media is a $5 CPM (cost per thousand impressions) in display, then your Facebook page is worth $500 per day. That’s what you would have to generate the same level of traffic. Arguably, the Facebook traffic is worth more, because it is trusted, has a higher engagement rate, and allows for sharing. But what if you post only once per week that few people notice your comments? You might have 1,000,000 fans, but be generating only a few thousand impressions per day.

In finance, if you want to buy a company, there are 3 primary valuation models you would use: discounted cash flow, comparables, and net asset value. The first (DCF) is a lifetime of projected earnings discounted back via an implied interest rate. The second is to say what similar companies are worth and apply their same p/2 ratio or composite set of metrics- for example, if Google is worth $150 billion and has 60 percent share, then Yahoo at 5 percent should be worth 1/12 that market cap. The third is liquidation value- if sell off all that company’s assets and pay off all debts, what are you left with? Each technique is appropriate in the right situation. For example, you wouldn’t use NAV with software companies, since they don’t have assets (and goodwill via acquisition doesn’t count).

The same 3 valuation techniques apply to Facebook fan value. Let’s step through them:

Analytics



3. Asset Value

If you were to sell your list to others, what would that fetch? If you were to sell ad space on Facebook (not allowed, of course), how much could you generate? If you were to buy the same amount of exposure via a display campaign, what would that cost you? That’s called earned media and often based on relative CPMs or what you are paying Google for clicks/visits.

What would it cost to buy the traffic? Here we are assuming that markets are efficient and that your advertising prowess is middle of the road. If you spent $50k in Facebook ads, it must be worth that in an efficient market. Not a good valuation model, but it’s actually the most common model to value advertising.Don’t believe me? Almost all agencies charge a fee based on media spend. So if you have an agency, then you are buying based on assuming the price is the determinant of value. Even worse is buying on a rate card, which is the equivalent of buying at “list price”, negotiating a 15 percent discount, then claiming it was a good deal.

• When you talk to advertisers, know which model they are using. Agencies understand the percent of spent markup. Performance players (lead gen and e-commerce) look at the first model (ROI and its cousin NPV, or Net Present Value).

• If your fan value is under $5, it’s due to a lack of engagement relative to your user base. Most retail brands are in this scenario, where they have invested significantly in building a fan base, but allow their investment to atrophy from not having engagement apps that stimulate and nurture relationships. Don’t be guilty of abandoning your customers.

• Your Facebook fan page report has flags for the presence of engagement tactics. If you do not have any of these apps, you effectively reduce your Facebook presence to a complaints board - a place where unhappy consumers can vent, often with significant brand damage if there is not a swift response.

2. Industry Multiples

Industry Multiples is the trickiest of valuation techniques because it’s subject to speculative bubbles. Just because everyone thinks a fan is worth $10, then you drive off the cliff, too. ClickZ published a “study” showing fans to be worth $3.60, as if all fans are homogenous. Adidas said fans are worth $90 based on the faulty logic that these people who are Facebook fans wouldn’t have bought otherwise - they didn’t measure incremental value, but took full credit.

There is no lifetime value of a Facebook fan because nobody has perfect vision into what changes Facebook will make, what the shift in marketing channels will be over time, and so forth. So it’s tricky to compare against direct mail, TV, or other more stable media. Perhaps the closest is email, which is semi-interactive and an initial acknowledgement of permission based marketing. I’ve used 2x as a rule of thumb- to say that a Facebook fan is worth 2x an email subscriber. Why 2x? Because emails go stale faster- people check their Facebook often multiple times per day and aren’t about to discard their identity for a new one each month. They don’t have multiple Facebook accounts, but will have one Facebook. And there is no social power is in email, since replies are not broadcast into the feed. The recommendation power of a Facebook fan, properly leveraged, is tremendous. The third, we will discuss in more detail.

Analytics



4.4 Measuring Engagement

If you're an administrator of your brand's Facebook page, you can access Insights. Here are 2 key metrics to determine your engagement:

What percentage of your fans are interacting with you? Is it under 1%? If so, then your fans are saying your messages are not interesting. Facebook, noticing this, will also not share your messages with friends — a double whammy. Improve your score here by asking questions as opposed to making statements, keeping messages 10 words long or less (versus a paragraph), including multimedia versus just text, and having content that triggers emotion. Above all, resist the temptation to sell too hard. The wall is where most engagement occurs, although you can boost your engagement rate by running ads to your postings, plus including engagement apps.

Interactions per Week looks at how many interactions you have. Underpost and you have no community. Overpost and you wear users out. Your ideal post frequency is dependent upon what your users expect. If you’re a news site, then 10 times a day can be okay. If you’re a B2B software company, a few times a week is probably fine. Do not cheat by auto-posting your RSS and Twitter entries—fans will frown upon non-social, automated content. Don’t promote your specials or discounts more than once in every 4 postings, and definitely no more than once per day. If you are getting less than 10% of your fan base as interactions each week, you’re not unlocking the value of your community. Thus, if you have 100,000 fans, you should have at least 10,000 interactions each week.

1. Feedback Rate

2. Interactions Per Week

Analytics



Deeper Measurement Options

Track your engagement apps and understand more about how you're engaging your fans and who are the most influential.

Analytics



Ads Apps Analytics

4.5 Social Media Health Check

Ads, Apps, Analytics

See how well you're doing tying this all together for your brand.

• Do you rotate your ad creatives at least twice a week to prevent burnout?

• Are you running separate ads for fans, friends or fans, and non-fans?

• Do you have at least 20 separate interest targets for which you have personalized messaging to each?

• Is your CTR over 0.050% and/or your CPC under $1.50?

• Do you know what in-line likes are and how this Facebook feature drives massive fan growth?

• Do you leverage the endorsement of existing fans via FFO targeting?

• Do you have a reveal tab?• Do you allow fan postings to

be visible on your page?• Do you use the XFBML like

button on your website to be "instantly social", revealing which of a user's friends are already fans?

• Do you have at least one engagement app such as coupons, voting, quizzes, sharing, and badging?

• Do you know how your Facebook marketing effors dovetail with other marketing channels?

• Have you calculated the value of your fans based on earned media, conversion value, or as assit?

• Are you able to track interactions from Facebook all the way through to a conversion event?

• Do you integrate reporting of what happens on your Facebook page with your website into a single dashboard?

• Do you know which of your fans are the most valuable based on demographics, interest, and engagement?

Analytics



Competitive Benchmarking

More Fans

Increased Reach

Search Ranking

Earned Media

Total Interactions

CouponRedemptions

E-commerce

4.6 The Engagement Funnel

If you don’t have a goal, then all roads look as good as any other. Yet more often than not you’ll find that few brands have specific goals with social media. Those that do are unlikely to have them quantified. To say you want “greater awareness” or “deeper engagement” is not enough. You need to have quantifiable goals based on a reasonable set of short, medium, and long-term targets. But that requires understanding a few things.

• What IS the right number of fans to have? • What is a healthy level of engagement? • How am I doing versus my competitors? • If I’m a direct marketing company, can I really

drive revenue, and if so — how much and how does this play with my other channels?

Analytics



Take advantage of the power of microtargeting on Facebook — at a crazy cheap price!

In the “Demographics” section, we targeted males ages 30 to 40.

5.1 How To Run An Effective Facebook Campaign For $5

Not long ago there was a buzz in the Webtrends and BlitzMetrics offices. One of our employees was trying to get my attention. He did so by creating a Facebook ad targeting anyone who lived in Portland, was between 30 and 40 years old and worked at either Webtrends or BlitzMetrics. Of the nearly 600 million users on Facebook, only 80 people met that criteria.

It cost him only 6 cents to do it.

And for that price, he was able to bombard our people with ads. The cost of that inventory is a 30 cent CPM, which means it costs 30 cents to show a thousand ads. So he was able to send 200 highly targeted messages. Using the “Location” section in the ad tools, he entered Portland, Oregon which is where BlitzMetrics headquarters is located.

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SECTION 5 - ADS



For “Education and Work” we typed BlitzMetrics LLC and WebTrends.

The result ended with an estimated 80 people targeted.

The total cost is 6 cents.

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Social media success is about pinpoint precision targets. We’re simulating the one-on-one conversations that friends have among themselves.

Sounds less like advertising and more like super-targeted email marketing, doesn’t it? And, in fact, it is, except for this:• You can send these messages without needing someone’s email address.• You pay only when someone clicks it (yes, it’s cost per click advertising).An impression is guaranteed when the person next opens Facebook (whereas in sending an email, you can only hope that someone will open it).

Now imagine that you’re a software company like Webtrends, building relationships with other agencies that resell your social analytics software. The founders of the data visualization agency JESS3 come to visit and you’d like to strengthen that bond. Maybe you spend $5 on a micro-targeted campaign like the one above, but slice it up to put the ad image more compactly next to the stats. You absolutely bombard 50 people, that’s 60 ads per person. Who cares that we got only 9 clicks (of which 4 happened to become fans)? The goal is not the click, but the awareness.

Total cost : $5.67 in Facebook ads

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But you could take it a step further, since those folks who do click through on the ad can come to your landing page. So imagine that we send all employees of the email marketing company ExactTarget to this Facebook landing page. (Warning: there is sound.) And how much did this landing page cost? Only $5. We have a network of dozens of freelancers that will do voiceovers, take photos, sing songs or do whatever for a few dollars.

While each of these examples might be clever or interesting, the question becomes: How do you scale this? Social media success is about pinpoint precision targets — ultimately, because we’re simulating the one-on-one conversations that friends have among themselves. But if you want to have 1,000 conversations, you need 1,000 different ads and 1,000 different landing pages. Who has the infrastructure, staff, or the budget to do that?

This is where smart automation comes in. Here’s an example of our scoring platform at work:Our partner Webtrends sells analytics software to the big boys who don’t mind paying $100,000 per year. Trouble is that every website needs some form of analytics. Maybe they’ll use Google Analytics — it’s free and pretty good. But our company wants to talk to only those clients who have the money and need for enterprise analytics software. It would be suicide to buy the keyword “web analytics” on PPC because of all the players that offer web analytics for free or super cheap.

So we took the Fortune 1000 and ran a script that collected a wide range of data — market cap, their industry, annual revenue, P/E ratio, website url, homepage pagerank, pages indexed, Facebook page, number of fans, company logo from Google images and so forth — dozens of metrics. See the detail from our spreadsheet/CSV file below.

And then we ran this data through our scoring algorithm to calculate their Social Score — how well they did versus peers in their industry. We might say, “Shell, you got a 56 and rank 7 out of 9 in Oil and Gas.” Or we might say, “Shell, why do you have only 53,548 fans while others in oil and gas have 184k on average?” Then we target people who work at Shell — not just everyone, but those people who have titles of VP of Marketing, Chief Financial Officer, Public Relations and so forth.

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There might be only a couple dozen people and not everyone puts their information on Facebook, but it’s enough. And you can bet it gets their attention! They come to a landing page that has their social scoring report, which shows a portion of the metrics that we’ve gathered. But they have to click "Like" to see the rest of the report, which is grayed out.

Now what happens when that person clicks “Like”? Of course, some of their friends and co-workers see it. And as all curious co-workers will do, they want to check out what you found to be so interesting. And then when these people see our ad, it shows that their friend liked it, which makes our offer of a report that much more social relevant (image at right).

Move to Quality Targeting Over Mass Media Blasts

Now do you see how this works? It’s quality over quantity, folks. Think about who you want to target as precisely as possible. Where do they work? Where do they live? What kind of car do they drive? What TV shows do they watch? What industry conferences do they attend?

Can’t afford $15,000 to exhibit at your favorite conference, plus the $3k to ship the booth out, the cost of the people to have to man the booth during Expo Hall hours, the schwag you have to give out and so forth? Then run an ad for the three weeks leading up to the conference targeting fans of the conference.

Bingo, you’ve now spent $5 to target this audience with your message and you have plenty of time to set up in-person meetings with those folks who are worth talking to, as opposed to any random people who might wander up to visit you at the show. And then you can thank them later.

Need some PR help, but can’t afford a New York PR agency for $10,000 a month? Then let Facebook do the work for you, running ads that target journalists who write for the Wall Street Journal, Mashable, Forrester, VentureBeat, the New York Times or whoever. What would you like to say to them?

Can’t afford to hire a big sales staff to cold call people who don’t want to talk to you? Easy. Just run ads targeting the competitors of your existing customers. Let’s say that Marriott is your client and you’ve got a great case study there. Run ads targeting the folks who work at Hilton, Starwood, Motel 6 or whoever. You can bet they want to know what their competitors are doing. Inquiring minds want to know!

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By now, I hope to have shown you that with some ingenuity and $5 in your pocket, you can make some serious waves on Facebook. If you’re a small business or start-up, learn how to master some of the techniques mentioned here. If you’re a big brand and looking to scale, then you’ll need some process and software automation to make this happen across thousands of conversations.

Know of any companies that offer software that will do mass personalization of ad and landing page content? Ad agencies are good at throwing bodies at client accounts — great service, but no scale. Software companies are good at building code based on a predefined set of rules that can be repeated. But success for your company can’t be solved by either a pure agency or a pure software company. The agency can’t throw enough people at the problem and the software company can’t offer a one-size-fits-all solution to everyone.

Only you can work the magic at your company. As much as we’d like to sell you some software, vendors like us can only assist you in coming up with the creative strategy that resonates best with your customers, the PR strategy that gets the press talking about you, a unique way to position how you solve your client’s pain. Ultimately, these $5 campaigns, whether you run just one of them or 10,000 of them, boil down to a marketing strategy — a unique, compelling message — that we can multiply out to your customers and get those customers to spread on your behalf. (Again, if you’re a smaller company targeting just a few potential or existing clients or partners, go for it yourself!)

Making Waves With 5 Bucks In Your Pocket

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Feedback

VisibilityFans

Micro-targeting on Facebook

5.2 Ad Targeting to Increase Feedback

Most of the pages you come across suffer from terrible engagement rates. They eagerly grew a lot of fans in 2010 but forgot about what to do with these fans. Allowed to go stale, these fans never see the brand again. The brand may post to the wall multiple times per day, but not have high enough EdgeRank score to qualify for showing up in the News Feed (the user’s home page). The solution is to use the ads platform to reconnect with these fans and to run ads so targeted, even non-fans will respond.

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Interests

Media & Press

Workplaces & Job Titles

Interest and Group Targeting

Your ads should always be targeted, else they risk not seeming both relevant and personal. If the client has run ads before, ask them if they recall their average CTRs. Usually they won’t know, but if they do and it’s below 0.050%, then something is wrong. Likely, they are not choosing highly relevant interest targets and then creating dozen, if not hundreds, of such ads.”

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Increasingly aggres-sive ads being ap-proved > better CTR > more profits

5.3 Good Facebook Ads Stimulate

Social Media - You’d think that would be an oxymoron, such as “open secret”, or “deafening silence”. So many people are getting into the social media stream, and so few are profiting. But it is possible to get practical value out of social media - let me provide a few tips:

Piggyback on trends: When Michael Jackson died, we had ads up in minutes. The ads were at first tame: “Is MJ dead?” and then increased to vulgar - “See the King of Pop’s grand exit”. By the time everyone else jumped on the bandwagon a day later, it was too late.

Automate things that work: If you spot something that works, systematize it.

Listen to what's popular: Tapping into what everyone is talking about is crucial to social media. Imagine you’re back in school and you’re trying to keep ahead of the curve with what’s hip. Luckily, almost every single social medium has a feed. This handy feature allows you to see a condensed version of what’s new on someone’s blog, Twitter account, or Facebook page. Check out Google Reader and subscribe to a few news websites, and keep an eye on what topics are popping up the most. For example, compare the popularity of Michael Jackson versus Billy Mays versus Farah Fawcett over the last 30 days. Clearly, MJ is the winner of the dead celebrity contest. So that ought to give you an idea of what hot trend to be riding.

CONCLUSION: It's easier to ride someone else's wave than to have to create your own.

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Current Ad: Suggested Revision:

5.4 Optimization

Note that I didn’t mention in the ad that they’re a dog lover. I believe that can safely be assumed because of the image. In some cases, where the image is not able to represent the interest, we do want to explicitly call out the interest target.

Using your Merchant Name in the ad is a double-edged sword. In this case, I believe we shouldn’t use it because the merchant doesn’t have brand awareness. Remember, to get a click from people who don’t know us, we must establish trust quickly - and no brand is no trust. Using the long brand name also lengthens the ad copy and makes it slightly harder to understand the value proposition.

Social media requires the lowest of conversion hurdles (the minimum of thought or consideration), since people are on Facebook to socialize That’s why I advocate the two-step conversion for most clients - one set of ads to get the right interest targets to be fans, then another set of ads targeted just at fans. True, it costs more to run more ads, but the prices are so low on Facebook ads that we can get away with this. Plus, depending on the nature of the product or service - hitting people at different points in the funnel can be far more effective than going for a jump all the way through to conversion in one leap.

A good rule of thumb is a 3X improvement on ads when you optimize them. In other words, if your cost per fan is 60 cents when you test the first couple days, you should be able to get it down to 20 cents on average. The 3X rule is what we’ve discovered is reasonably possible with a moderate amount of testing - of course, you could get far more.

* Liking as a condition of entry is not allowed, but many brands do it. Proceed at your own risk.

Ad Copy Techniques

Determining Who Is The Winner

If we have 3 images - which of them performs better? By “perform”, I mean by the goal we’re being measured on, as well as early indicators (CTR and CPC). If we have 3 interest targets, how do they perform? Or maybe we have a few age/sex/location targets. Unless we have multiple variations of each ad multiplied, it will be hard to isolate a winner and isolate the performance of a single variable.

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Demographic Optimization

FOF (Friend of Fan) andNon-FOF Ads Split Test

Run one ad that is not FOF and another that is, just so we can get an apples-to-apples comparison. In other words, the ads are identical except for this targeting change. This is called an A/B test and we want to determine the differences in CTR, CPC, etc... Don’t let it run more than a couple hundred dollars in total - or enough to have a significant difference.

If you have an interest target that is already highly skewed towards a particular demographic (combination of age, sex, and gender), then it’s not necessary to also filter by demographics, too. For example, if you are targeting New England Patriots fans (folks who like a professional football team), it’s not necessary to specify males as a demographic. If you do, that will cut out 20% of the audience, as there are still some females that will like this.

Therefore, when setting up initial ads that have interest targets, demo targeting is usually not necessary. But in subsequent refinement, you might want to multiply into combinations of these demographics. The Demographic reports in Facebook’s ad tool will tell us that the CTR or conversion rate may differ or not.

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Fan Targeting

Non-FanTargeting

Friend of FanTargeting

Your friend is attending, how about you?

Segmentation

Brand Logo On The Ad Image


Cold Targeting vs. Fans Targeting

For many large brands, often the highest CTR and lowest CPC/CPF is the brand image itself. Thus, if we could make the logo larger, it could increase the CTR. Maybe even try a colored border, provided that the client approves this.

When you do interest targeting, you don’t always have to put in a gender filter, too. For example, if you specify “cooking”, you don’t have to necessarily also place “female” as a gender target. There are some men who like cooking as well. To see how the counts change, try the targeting in the ads interface with and without female targeting — you’ll see only a minor difference. The reason is that most of the folks who like cooking are female.

Average CTR of ads to non-fans: .05%

Average CTR of ads to fans: .35%

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Ad Distribution

Have you ever considered doing pure FOF targeting in cities/states where your brand is strong? For instance, let’s say you’re running a campaign for a fast food chain in California cities since the location density is much lower than the rest, say cities in New Mexico. The lower the people/location figure, the better we’ll do, as the people seeing the ads are more likely to have a location near them. In addition, online ads should follow offline popularity as a tactic to increase conversion.

Choose interest that has at least 1,000 population reach. When doing FOF, the estimated reach should be at least 10,000 but even if only 500, it’s worth doing, you’ll just have to create a LOT of them.

3 Types of Audience Reach:

Targeted: Based on the targeting you’ve selected, this is an approximate number of people your ads and Sponsored Stories can reach.

Reach: The number of individual people who saw your ads or Sponsored Stories.

Social Reach: The number of people who saw your ad or Sponsored Story with the names of their friends who liked your Page, RSVPed to your event, or used your app. If you are running ads off Facebook, you won’t be able to see the social reach.

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Ad Multiplication

Ad Burn Out

Try our top ads with FOF Like cooking?, Like [interest]? For example, target “food network” and say “Like Cooking Shows?” target “Bobby Flay” and say “Like Grilling?” If you create enough of them, you can do FOF targets, too FOF significantly limits reach, of course, but the trade-off is better CTR and conversion.

It may be that if you run an ad that was semiburned out, but gave it time to “rest”, it gets a light refresh.

A good predictor of ad burnout is not just the trendline for CTR, CPC, and CPF, but also looking at the audience size each ad targets. The smaller the base, the fewer number of impressions needed to burn out.

I’m saying that if the audience base is small, it takes fewer impressions total to burn out. For example, an ad that targets 100k people can serve a lot more impressions before burnout than one with only 1k people in the target. Smaller audiences might not burn out faster in terms of number of days, since they will also show fewer impressions per day. Therefore, in estimating future traffic and our ability to hit fan targets at CPF goals, we should account for audience size. Assume we can hit users 20 times before burnout on average. So if the audience is 100k people, we can serve 2mm impressions.

Audience size matters especially in local. If some campaign wants 100k fans in just Atlanta vs nationwide, it will be a lot more expensive because we hit burnout faster - there are fewer people to target. We get saturated faster. In large multiplied local campaigns, whether for a franchise or a single location, we have to consider the bounds of each geo-target. This is true is regular PPC, too. ReachLocal has a traffic eliminator built into their proposal generator, which I’ve shared a few times. Buggy - a good concept, but poorly implemented.


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Naming Conventions

Please name the ad something descriptive, since the default ad name (the internal name we give it, which the users can’t see), will default to “(campaign_name) (number)”, which is not descriptive or helpful when we want to go back to view stats. Look at the name of the ad you are multiplying from and just copy that ad name, appending “image-2” to show we are testing that same ad but with another image. Better yet, append “Steak_food_image.women.close.up” to the ad name to be even more descriptive. If you use the ad multiplication tool, the ad is automatically named for you. With new clients, run ad so that you can get a solid base to multiply from. Do not just multiply up 1,000 ads to start.

Education Level Impacts CTR

Competitive Targeting

Want to know how one small business saw 603% growth from effectively using sponsored stories? Click here.

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http://www.dennis-yu.com/603-growth-fromsponsored- stories-what-one-small-biz-learned



5.5 Bid Optimization

Why Is My CPC So High?

Walking Down The Bid

CPM or CPC?

Have you considered using FOF targeting on your ads? If you have 10% social percentage on the ads, FOF targeting is not being used. FOF targeting will significantly increase the CTR, which then reduces the CPF (Cost Per Fan).

Walking down bids gradually is smart. A new ad should start at the top of the recommended CPC range, then gradually decrease, keeping at the top of the recommended range.

We do CPC when we want to drive clicks or some form of engagement. We do CPM when it’s a really small target, hits an existing small fan base, or is just to drive awareness.

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Setting Budget For New Campaigns

Working With Ads That Aren't Performing Well

A high daily campaign budget can easily cause a thousand dollars of loss in a couple hours. If you want to test, create a new campaign with a low budget - then promote the ad to the production campaign.

No need to turn bids down to 5 cents - if an ad isn’t doing well, bid down to 10 cents above the ad that is pulling best. So if the best Sprint ad is at 55 cents, then you can bid 65 cents, for example. That should give us “some” traffic, while a 5 cent bid is totally shut out of the ad auction.

QUESTION: My daily budget is set to $9,000 per day, how come the ad spend is only at $1,501?

ANSWER: is 60 cents when you test the first couple days, you should be able to get it down to 20 cents on average. The 3X rule is what we’ve discovered is reasonably possible with a moderate amount of testing - of course, you could get far more. Just because you want to spend a certain amount on Facebook doesn’t guarantee it will get spent. Inventory is finite and we are also subject to the competition for that inventory. Just like with PPC on Google, increasing the daily budget doesn’t necessarily mean we will get more traffic. Consider the size of the audience we are targeting. You will be able to get perhaps double as many daily impressions as people in the audience if you are at the top of the bid range, since position (not shown) does matter.

For example, if are have an available audience of 100k people for an ad, then you could perhaps get 200k daily impressions until burnout. Consider an average CTR of 0.030 percent and you might get 600 clicks and 400 fans. That will last a few days until burnout, when your bid eventually falls outside the range, whether because our system progressively bids down or Facebook increases the range because our CTR is decreasing.

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5.6 Why B2B Marketing Is Facebook's Best Kept Secret

Dental Equipment Manufacturer:

Software of Technology Start-Up

Sure, the 600 million Facebook users are by and large goofing off while on the site. And a handful of the smartest B2B marketers would have you believe that Facebook is no place for serious business — they don’t want you to learn their techniques, bidding on that same traffic, and jacking up prices on traffic that is currently super cheap. But there’s the secret: you can target people by the companies at which they work and their job titles. Consider these examples:

You can target dentists, dental hygienists, and other practitioners to market your equipment. You can’t do that on Google, since you don’t know whether the person who is searching on “dentist” actually is one or is just looking for one. People place their professions in their Facebook profile, so all job titles are fair game.

You don’t have the money to hire a fancy New York PR agency or to exhibit at a trade show. So run ads that target the attendees of the show and the magazines that they read.

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Your Customers:

Why not thank them for being loyal? Wish them a happy birthday, tell them about your new products, offer them a discount. Make sure you’re rewarding fans for loyalty, as opposed to only offering a price concession, which leads to price erosion and cannibalization of lifetime revenues.

In fact, for your very best customers, why not make them a landing page that will make the life of your inside sales folks that much easier? Webtrends is a partner of ours, and as such, we’re expanding into the Japanese market. Recently, the President of Webtrends Japan had his birthday, so we made him a customized greeting.

Your clients are not likely to be reading the email newsletters that you send out and are only partially appreciative of the overpriced fruit baskets that you send at Christmas. So why not make a personalized greeting for them– maybe some ads that make their day (yes, Facebook allows you to run ads on their birthdays) or something witty?

Will this drive new sales? Perhaps, if you have it tie with your other marketing channels, operate under the understanding that nurturing takes time, and have great content (especially video). Consider Facebook to be your second email channel. Someone who has freshly signed up for your email list might not be buying today (depends on the average length of the funnel for your particular product), but at least you made a connection with them before they are in the market. And that’s much less expensive than bidding on the PPC keywords when they have decided to buy. They’ll search for your name directly versus a generic search term.

Are you making sure to give credit to the social, display, and other demand generation channels when people do come in on your branded search terms?

The sharpest B2B marketers realize that Facebook is a channel to nurture leads and strengthen bonds with EXISTING clients. The optimization of such channels requires multi-channel measurement to be able to tease out the ROI, social content to drive engagement, and some fortitude (to stomach the fact that these people aren’t necessarily going to convert today, but will when they’re ready to buy).

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Apps

SECTION 6 - APPS

App Tutorial

1. What are the correct specs for this?The width should be 810px while the height is unlimited.

2. How would I do a “double splash” page? In order to build a reveal tab, first you need to understand how to set up a Facebook application.

Part 1: Getting Started

Step 1: Go to developers.facebook.com/appsStep 2: Click “Create New App” at the top right cornerStep 3: Type in “Reveal Tab” as app nameStep 4: Click “On Facebook” on the left navigation, then you will see the following page :



Part 2: Reveal Tab

Step 1: Open "index.php"Step 2: Copy the "appld" and "secret" from the Facebook application page, set the dimension of your page. You also need to upload "facebook.php" to the server.

Apps



Step 3: Convert your pre-like content and post-like content into standard html and CSS, then put them into the appropriate location as seen below:

Step 4: Upload “index.php”, “facebook.php”, and all the image files to your server.

Step 5: Go back to Facebook application setting page, you can set your ideal canvas page URL, and then set your canvas URL below as (for example. For the secure URL, you just need to replace “http” with “https”. Then go to “page tab” at the bottom, put in “Welcome” as tab name, tab URL as, and the secure URL as well. Then click “save changes” at the bottom.

Step 6: Once you correctly set up the URL, you may go click “above” > “ basic info” on the left navigation, under the app image section you can add an icon for your app.

Step 7: After you add an icon for your app, you go to click “View App Profile Page” on the left navigation.

Apps



Then you click "Add to My Page". A new window will pop up and you can just select your own fan page. After that you will see the tab is on your fan page.

Apps



OperationsProcess



LEVEL HOURLY RATE / SKILL

$10 Create Dashboards

Basecamp Basics

Facebook Ads

Proposals / Contracts

Client Reporting

Google Analytics

Junior Project Manager

Blogging / SEO

Project Lead

SQL Analysis

Google PPC

Email Marketing

Negotiate Enterprise Deals

People Manager

Conference Speaker

1

$227

$164

$3410

$5013

$122

$268

$185

$3811

$5614

$143

$309

$206

$4412

$6215

15 Level Analyst System

Operations Process



1.1 We Are Performance Marketers

SECTION 1 - INTRO TO BLITZ

We're different because we're measurable and transparent in our methods.

We were founded with clients such as Dominos Pizza, Nike, Rosetta Stone and other brands with millions in budget and thousands of locations. This same platform, we’ve adapted for local businesses who have just one or a handful of locations to promote.

We serve local professional service firms — dentists, doctors, lawyers, auto repair, roofers, and similar businesses. They have customers within a 15-mile radius and there are many of the same type of business in the United States, differing only by location. Unlike the yellow pages or other forms of blind advertising, we drive CALLS — you can see how many and even listen to them for undeniable proof.

Our service is SIMPLE and affordable — you don't have to worry about the technical bits (but can see them if you want) and our service is month-to-month, starting as low as $24.95/month.

Here’s what we do: •Local business listings: We get businesses to show up on Google Maps, Yahoo, 411 searches, and anywhere else people are looking for services. They give us their information once and we distribute to over 200 directories, including a verified feed into Google.

•Tweak existing websites or build a new one so that it will show up on Google — what good is a pretty site if it doesn’t show up on Google when people are searching?

•Advertise on Google and Facebook for your keywords — at the exact moment people are searching for their service.

•Call tracking: Show businesses how many calls they get from our efforts — see exactly what they're getting. We place a unique phone number on websites for tracking and forward it to their regular number.

Operations Process



For clients, they see the effects in: •Rankings: When people search for “Denver liposuction” (or whatever their particular keyword might be), we help them show up in the map results (the 7 red dots on the map), the ads (down the right side of the page), and organic results (below the maps on the left). We balance our efforts to generate the most traffic from people who are searching for them.

• Clients should expect that their ads be live within a week, their organic search to bubble up within 5 weeks and their map results to show up within 8 weeks.

• Conversion: Once we get visitors to a client's site, we have to provide them with enough information about their service to get them to call. We expect about 1 in 10 visitors to pick up the phone to call, when optimized properly.

• Expect that a client's effective cost per call (how much you spend divided by the number of phone calls we generate) to be between $15 and $50 per call, depending on their vertical and geography. Restaurants are cheaper than cosmetic surgeons, while rural areas are cheaper than New York City.

• Expect a client's website, whether we build a new one or optimize an existing one, to start showing significant results within 8 to 10 weeks.

Operations Process



When people ask you “What is Blitz?” You can say this…We drive more calls to local businesses via measurable on-line marketing — mainly showing up on Google. Why don’t we type your name in and see who comes up?

Our Differentiators From a Marketing Standpoint Are: •Your personal Internet marketing expert: You're not dealing with a call center or salesperson (who just hands off to operations). The person you deal with is your analyst, from start to end — a trained expert. No management overhead.

•Performance-based: We are not an agency — we spent your money like it's ours. We are fully- transparent — so the reports you see and the same ones we see. No long-term contracts.

•Simple: Easy to understand — you spend a dollar, you get $x in new clients. Now how we do that across multiple marketing channels is complex, but looking at results doesn't have to be.

Our Differentiators From an Internal Standpoint (Not to be Shared Outside) Are: •Better technology: our PPC and SEO techniques are superior. Now while everyone will claim that, too, clients are in no position to judge, so it's not worth mentioning. We have seen the automated processes that the other guys use to build campaigns — they are weak. And the people they assign to manage accounts/campaigns are junior — this is because the other players are trying to grow by hiring a bunch of so-so, unmotivated people. Other players were started by salespeople, who grew by hiring more bodies to sell and packing call centers. Then you need a bunch of management overhead to manage these people.

Our approach is to first start from the mechanics of how campaigns are built and optimized — it's about building the platform. We already have a good idea on how these pieces fit together, as opposed to other guys that integrate random stuff or buy other companies. The biggest technology advantage is that we tie across multiple disciplines — SEO, SEM, email marketing, social networking, traditional media. Few companies cover more than 2, though they may have separate divisions that don't communicate well together.

•Network marketing: We're going to tap a hidden workforce that is well educated and relatively inexpensive. No, it's not India — it's stay at home moms (with degrees), webmasters, students, and other folks who are smart and motivated enough to learn our tools, sell, and manage clients.

Network marketing is not Multi-Level Marketing because we don't have a down line (you refer a friend who then refers someone else — and you get a cut of that someone else's earnings). Traditionally, network marketing has been used to hawk stuff like unregulated health supplements, beauty products, and Tupperware. But this is a chance for us to empower the little guy to help the little guy.

1.2 What Makes Blitz Different?

Operations Process



•Small team: We are not going to grow beyond a small core team. That doesn't mean we won't employ more people. And definitely no management overhead — directors, vice presidents, senior vice presidents, assistant deputy directory to the vice chairman, etc... No overhead means we can allocate more spend to the client, which in turn, will differentiate us from all the other big guys who suffer from a churn problem. Clients get so little traffic (badly managed at that) because the cost of paying for the overhead is so high.

Target of Local Service Firms, Not Just Any Small BusinessOur technology for SEO and SEM is based on geo-multiplication — creating combos of geo + generic term phrases to rank for on SEO. And buying those same terms via PPC. So these techniques won't work on businesses that sell nationally (unless they are franchises with many locations). The SEO techniques we have are very effective in ranking for something like "Denver eye surgeon", but not "eye surgeon". And it can be semi-automated. A generic dentist PPC campaign and site template can be reused a thousand times.

Who is not a local service business? Folks who sell software and hard goods (shopping carts) — and companies with large departments, where the decision-making is filtered. We want to have folks who sell their time — professionals who bill by the hour or by the procedure. They won't blink at being billed $100/hour, since they bill that, too. And they understand that specialized expertise is expensive. Thus, we can equip a house mom to provide specialized expertise that currently resides primarily with agencies, who bill like mad. Consulting is easy money — but it won't scale.

The beauty of a consulting business is that you make money right out the gate — it's hard not to when you're billing by the hour or by the project. The downside is that agency work is not easily scalable — clients are demanding and require special attention. This requires us to hire lots of people, develop software that isn't reusable, and deal with the general management issues of running an agency. Those issues include:

•Balancing workload: Making sure that you have the right level of resources to handle the client base — hard to do when staffing and client bases are both growing.

•Financial operations: Making sure we charge the right amount, plus bill/collect on time to prevent working capital problems.

•Training: The more folks you have and broader your service offering, the greater the burden on education.

We are a full-service agency, which is the hardest type to manage — but are moving towards a software approach, once we have simple packages that can be sold for $X a month. Listings, PPC, and site templates are coming soon.

A software company (which is what Blitz effectively is) builds a piece of software and then sells it many times over. The cost of the second and subsequent copies of the software is basically zero — the same is true with incremental staff needed. Thus, the model has a huge up-front cost before you see a dime of revenue. You start off at a loss, breaking even after only selling X units of the software — but then have potential to scale to millions of copies sold with no incremental cost.

Operations Process



We are both like a software and a service firm — more like a service firm now because we are subsidizing Blitz development with agency profits, and also like a service firm because the number of analysts will grow proportionately to the number of clients we have. But with a shift to more process, we can scale up faster with less management oversight, as in the franchise model. It's this that will allow us to get to 100,000 business clients in the next few years.

Measurable Social Impact (how Blitz gives back to the community)The last of our businesses is not really a business at all. AffectChange is a social network geared towards community managers of non-profits. It relies upon Google Grants and internal email lists to drive traffic, game dynamics to drive viral interaction, and our own analytics to drive measurable change. You can read the accompanying documents to understand the strategy and see the wireframes.

Until we have a usable product (via quick customization of elgg or creating our own code from scratch), we won't be able to market effectively. We have a half dozen large non-profits that are excited in the concept and would be interested in a trial. Meanwhile, we'll continue to offer pro-bono PPC optimization to non-profits — to do good in the community, build up our PPC experience, and to have clients waiting in the wings to try AffectChange.

Operations Process



Who is Blitz?We are a team of web marketing experts that focus on “lead generation” for local service businesses. When prospects search for local merchants and services on the Internet, we make sure our customers are there.

What is the opportunity?Search engines are the new yellow pages — and we are applying our experience from working at the search engines to help our clients be found online. Consider these staggering statistics: •43%ofsearchengineusersareseekingalocalmerchanttobuysomethingoffline.•54%ofonlinesearchershavesubstitutedInternet/searchforthephonebook.•70%ofsmallbusinessesareawareofInternetmarketing,butonly8%aredoingsomethingaboutit.

Depending on whose numbers you use, there are 16 million small businesses in the United States. Only a fraction of those are on the Internet. Perhaps it's too complicated or expensive — or maybe they don't have time, given everything else they have to worry about.

Next time you are chatting with your favorite local business, ask them — “you might have a website, but can prospects find you using the Google and Yahoo search engines?” Do a search for them. For example, on “San Diego chiropractor” and see if they show up. Odds are that their competitors are there instead of them. We can fix that.

What if I am not a programmer or know much about the web?You can drive a car without necessarily knowing how to fix it. Similarly, Blitz will provide you with the tools and teach you how to operate them. Follow our training guides, collaborate with other analysts, and you’ll be successful. Never done web marketing before? That's okay. It's not rocket science, but it does require a few weeks of training — a few days, if you're really focused.

How much money can I make?That part depends on the goals of the individual — some people will build their own business and hire up others, while others will seek to balance the priorities of family life with generating a second income. The beauty is that you earn a residual income — as long as you keep that client, you keep 10% of billings. And most of the work is up-front, since our system will do adjustments as we go along. Let’s say you get 20 dentists each spending $2,000 a month with us. Then you’re getting $4,000 a month each and every month. And that local dentist is getting measurable ROI — in this case, about 40-60 phone calls a month from being seen on Google. Their satisfaction with you for helping them grow their business is why they will stay with you.

Your local dry cleaner, auto mechanic, hairstylist, and restaurant — these are all potential customers that you already know!

If you want the full details, ask us and we’ll send you more documentation (including a commission calculator).

1.3 Frequently Asked Questions for New Analysts

Operations Process



What does this cost?There are no books to buy or training sessions to pay for — even if you had the money, you would not be able to purchase some of the things Blitz’s team will teach you. We believe that equipping our associates to truly be Internet marketing experts is a better use of time than teaching “hard-sell” tactics.

Blitz wants small business customers to think of you first when they have a question about how to grow their online presence. You can feel good about helping out small businesses with something they desperately need. This is not vitamins or weight loss pills — it is measurable, performance marketing. Your friends and colleagues will know you as that Internet guru that gets businesses onto the first page of Google and Yahoo.

Do I have to quit my current job?No. If you don't have any clients, we'll teach you how to build your book of business. If you are a stay-at-home parent, this is an excellent opportunity to work from home, with the flexibility to manage your own schedule. For companies servicing small businesses, this is a service to complement what you are already offering your clients. Or maybe you’re a sales person — provided that your current company doesn’t bar you from selling other products, you can add ours to the mix.

Who is the ideal customer?Anyone spending money in a major yellow pages category — for example, dentists, lawyers, movers, plumbers, carpet cleaners, and so forth. The ideal customer is one where there are hundreds, if not thousands, of service providers across the country — different only by geography. They provide this service to local customers. These are businesses spending anywhere from $500 to tens of thousands of dollars per month, all without knowing what they're getting, and often being locked into a 12-month contract.

Internet advertising is much more efficient than the yellow pages, so it is relatively easy to explain to these businesses the rationale behind spending some of their money on finding customers through search engines. Blitz also provides daily performance reports, so customers know exactly how their campaigns are doing — how many times their ad was shown, how many people visited their site, and their best keywords.

Who is NOT the ideal customer?Internet-only, national, name-brand, adult-oriented, or part-time businesses. We also do not service international customers, which requires different language targeting and a different mix of search engines. Our reputation is important, so we do not want to promote businesses that could potentially be distasteful or offensive.

Operations Process



What's the fine print?There are several things to fully consider in pursuing this exciting business opportunity.

First, we do not offer salary or benefits. We have a pay-for-performance mindset, which applies to our customers, reps, and operations. If you are a quick learner and motivated, the compensation plan rewards performance. But if you don't provide value to your clients, your book of business will stagnate and so will your commissions.

Blitz has certain processes and technology that give the company a significant competitive advantage over other firms that do search engine marketing. We require that you do not share such intellectual property. If you leave the company, you are prohibited by contract from working in this industry for 12 months. We hope you will respect the investment we make in you.

Want to know more?Contact the person who told you about this. Or feel free to call me, Dennis, at (817) 913-0780 or send an email to [email protected]. If you have the time, energy, and intellectual curiosity to pursue Internet marketing, Blitz wants to hear from you.

Once you are qualified, we’ll equip you with marketing materials, train you, and be there at every step of the way in growing your business. If you’re shy about talking to business owners about what we can do, we’ll even join you in the meetings or give you clients to manage that have already signed up.

What are you waiting for?

Operations Process



1.4 Analyst Support

Blitz provides marketing support to assist the rep: The Analyst is there to service the Client at all stages, not just close deals. It is not pure-sales, as they are paid on both the sign-up and residual. As the “Internet Marketing Partner” to small businesses, the Analyst must go beyond the script and possess deep domain expertise — an education in Internet Marketing is key:

•Sales Training: Weekly staff calls to review sales techniques on how to prospect and prepare for meeting a prospect, how to address objections, what our competitors are doing, and how to close a client at the “right” price and for the “right” package. Staff calls need scheduled into calendar, and generate an alert the day before the sales call. Includes marketing materials for on-line and print-based presentations. Staff calls will coincide with current Blitz status calls now, but will branch off to be their own calls in the future.

•Internet Marketing Training: To help the Analyst become an internet marketing expert (as we are “your internet marketing partner”) and provide backline support to accounts. As this is a consultative sell, the Analyst should be gathering information along the way to understand the client’s goals (pain points), top competitors, marketing budget, happiness with their existing website, decision making process, and so forth. Blitz will provide weekly orientation and training seminars to new and existing reps, broken into four, two hour modules, with each module to be given once per month. Each module will have assigned reading, to be completed prior to the session. Upon completion of training, the Analyst can take the Google AdWords tests to receive their certifications. The four modules are:

1. Introduction To Web Marketing: how Internet marketing complements your existing marketing mix (mailers, signage, word-of-mouth, yellow pages, etc…). Our secondary tagline of “drive, convert, measure” hammers home the aspects of performance marketing, where everything is measurable. We use the reporting interface on my.Blitz.com. Reading: EBook – Aaron Wall’s 50 keyword tips

2. Search Engine Marketing: fundamentals of keywords, ad copy, bidding, How to do keyword research, some of the techniques we use to optimize campaigns—bidding to targets (CPA, pacing, position), Geo-Term Combinations, DKI (Dynamic Keyword Insertion). Order entry fields on Blitz for SEM. Reading: Kelsey SEM part III

3. Search Engine Optimization: how to evaluate a website from a search engine spider perspective, performing queries to check rank, common SEO mistakes, third party ranking tools (Alexa, Compete, Google PR). Order entry fields on Blitz.com and examination of SEO techniques used for existing clients.

4. Web Analytics: Google Analytics and Awstats, landing page optimization, evaluating funnel conversions, multi-channel marketing and the impact of the “assist”. Calculating ROI by channel, keyword, ad group, and other variables, Put into list of items in workflow system)

• When new analysts or resellers join, give them a package of pre-made Facebook statuses and tweets.

First 30 small businesses get local listings for $10/month!

Operations Process



Inbound Requests

Set-Up

Operations

E-Mail

Postcards

Newsletter

Blog RSS

Contact Forms with Email and Physical Address

Awareness/Sign up for Newsletter, Blog Updates

Present Dates for Electronic and Reg. Mailings

Lead Form

Email Trigger

Proposal

Email Trigger

Analysis

Admin Approval

Automated Emails

Domain Procurement

WP Set Up/Design

PPC Campaign

SEO

Listings

Email trigger when site goes live

Management

Billing

Reporting

Upsells

Support

Prospecting Tools

Sales Contract

Commission Schedule

HR Forms

Analyst Details

Training

Lead Mgmt

Client Care

Coaching from BL

Continuing Support to Clients/Customers

Process Step Customer Client Analyst

SECTION 2 - PROCESS OVERVIEW

Operations Process



Process: Set of tasks that link together, which includes messaging of who gets what message triggered by what event in which channel.

1. Color code and bold to make things clearer Bold the names of entities-- the analyst, client, email trigger, call tracking system.

• Use colors to distinguish stage of readiness for actions Dark green for items that are manual steps and will remain manual Dark orange for items that are manual, but could be automated Dark blue for items that are already automated steps

2. Then create a single spreadsheet that has all the process steps — one row per action. Columns:

• Action Number: 10, 20, 30, etc... going up by increments of 10. I am using the word "action" instead of "task".

• Action Grouping: Multiple actions can be grouped into a sequence or set of tasks. For example, "new analyst enrollment" and "client monthly reporting".

• Action Description: One sentence describing the action. For example, "manager approval of PPC campaign, then goes live", "analyst collects the client credit card information".

• Triggered By: References the task number that triggers it, so we can tie the sequences together.

• Trigger Time: Number of days elapsed. Most actions are triggered based on a combination of another event happening and a period of time elapsing.

• Responsible: Who must perform the action — name the entity (lead, client, analyst, manager, admin, accounting, system). Use the generic name of the function or system.

• Notification Method: Can be email, voice notification, web notification (within Blitz task system) — can be multiple methods. Default is web notification.

• Message Template: The canned messages should have message codes (BILL_NOTIFY1, BILL_NOTIFY2, ANALYST_WELCOME1, ANALYST_WELCOME2, CLIENT_WELCOME1, etc...) All messages should be placed at the back of the process document. Replace actual names with entity names in brackets — [analyst], [client], and so forth.

2.1 How To Write a Strong Process

Operations Process



• Recurring Flag: If checked, then it's based on a cron, such as monthly billing. Else, it's triggered one-off — for example, an escalation when an analyst doesn't submit a time card for the last 72 hours > then notify his manager.

• Business Yype: If small business, then "SB". If enterprise, then "EN". If affiliate, then "AF".

The key to a great process that works is thinking through all the steps to consider all the things that could happen and making sure you've accounted for each major scenario possible. For example, in new client enrollment, the analyst could enroll a client via paper forms or via on-line. Do both methods of enrollment have all the fields that are necessary? What if the client wants to self-enroll (a shorter process) and what if they want to select between different packages? Some options are available only with more expensive packages — video, more design hours, custom landing pages, etc.

This is the factory blueprint for our company — focus on quality thinking, as opposed to mindless generation of pages. It's the heart of blitz — 50 years ago McDonalds evolved from a single hamburger stand to a national chain and it was a process that ensures consistency and quality no matter what store you go into.

Operations Process



Consider How to Mass-Personalize Messaging and Content Creation

Creating PPC Master Campaigns

Example: mad libs geo-multiplied text for wp sites and one page listings:http://www.searchengineguide.com/jeff-howard/creating-good-localized-copy-without-muc.php

Your objective, for example, is to create a master PPC template for roofers, so that for any new roofer we get, the system will take these base terms and both geo-multiply (a nationally targeted campaign with all geo keywords) and then geo-target (a geo campaign with no geo terms).

Consider also that the campaign will be form driven by what the analyst picks in the client enrollment form. Thus, the analyst is selecting "roofing" as the category and then can select multiple roofing subcategories. These subcategories must correspond 1-to-1 to the ad groups, with the exception of some generic ad groups that are always added by default (not even shown on the screen).

Operations Process



Step By Step Process

Step 1. Find and Replace 1. Review information received from client. 2. Paste client name and contact information into proposal template. 3. Find and replace any references to the client’s name and vertical (industry) throughout the proposal (example: replace “dentist” with “florist”)

Step 2. Choose a PackagePricing has 2 parts: a one-time set-up fee and a monthly Advertising budget.

1. 3 options (includes Facebook page and website): A. Express - $150: Choose design from template, purchase domain, add content, hosting, email support only. B. Standard - $900: Above items plus block of 6 custom design hours, 3 manual listings. C. Performance - $3,000: Custom site or modification of existing site. Requires Analyst consultation.

2. Advertising A. Monthly figure at $300, $750, and $2,000 a month. See local brochure for description of options. B. Set-up fee plus one full month of advertising due at project start.

2.2 Creating a Proposal

Operations Process



When an Analyst brings in a new lead they: 1. Fill out the New Lead Form (on Blitz.com or in the PDF): 1. Name 2. Email 3. Address 4. Phone number 5. Business category 6. Subcategory 7. Do they currently have a website 8. Geography (Zip and radius around zip) – Default to 10 miles 9. Top competitors 10. Package type: See above 3 options 11. Additional comments that will guide the presentation: Insert text explaining what you need to put in this box: 1. How much can they spend 2. 3-4 sites they like and why they like them 3. Top competitors 4. Unique selling proposition 12. Box to upload attachments (existing creatives with descriptions) 13. What white label client is it under/Analysts name and contact info 14. Assigned Analyst - defaults to logged in user 15. About us 16. Services provided the provide 17. Check box – Create Proposal 18. Check box – Create Analysis 2. We will adapt this form for self-service by adding help fields, removing pricing and internal fields. 3. System assigns lead to Analyst. If not default Analyst, then send email alert to Analyst that they have a new lead including lead details. If proposal or analysis boxes are checked, then create tasks assigned to an Admin for now. Later will create queue to Basecamp or other Analyst to handle. Task will show up as a single row with date, client name, and type of task (create proposal, create analysis). Due date is set at 2 business days after posting date. Clicking on the client name will bring up the lead form detail. Admin should have a task queue, ordered by date ascending.

4. Admin assigns tasks inside BlitzVille and Basecamp.

5. When deliverables are completed, Admin checks off those tasks in the list, generating an email and web alert to the Analyst, while also making sure to send the attachment, via separate email.

6. If proposal or analysis boxes are not checked, highlight lead as RED, when 7 or more days since entry date has passed. If proposal and/or analysis boxes are checked, once deliverables are ready, send notification to Analyst. Lead turns red 7 days after checked deliverables have been fulfilled. Use RED as a warning color that task is old and needs to be acted on.

2.3 After Acquiring a New Lead

Operations Process



7. Analyst gets signed proposal and initial payment, which is sent to Manager to confirm, then selects drop down to convert from lead to client. When Analyst changes lead status to client, then Manager gets a task to verify that contract and payment have been received. Once she approves, the system adds a new record to the client list (clients that are new for the first 7 days are shown in Bold and do not show up in lead list anymore).

8. Admin gets email and web alert that lead has turned into a client, and the Admin can approve or disapprove with comment. If approved, then workflow for site development can begin. If disapproved, comment is required, and is sent back to the Analyst as an alert and lead turns RED.

9. All sites must have admin approval to start, plus confirmation by Manager that proposal and payment are received.

Operations Process



1. Budget - $150: Choose design from template, purchase domain through The Designer’s interface, add content, hosting, email support only. Budget is fully automated except for buying the domain name.

Templates are organized by category, and are added to drop down as the WordPress Generator (see project in basecamp on this tool) creates them. This requires a preview where you can:

1. Select a category 2. Browse templates 3. Select a template

2. Standard - $900: Above items plus block of 6 custom design hours, 3 manual listings. Tasks are generated for Admin with domain name and category when site goes live to create listings. Admin will assign tasks to Basecamp. Analyst can check off additional options in the lead form, each with an associated cost.

1. Call tracking – If call tracking is selected, then the Engineer’s automated system generates a local phone number to be placed in template. If not fully automated, number is passed to Designer along with lead info. 2. Article writing 3. Email marketing 4. Identity package – business cards, brochure, mailer 5. Shopping cart 6. Video 7. Photo gallery 8. Each option should have a help text/tool-tip next to it, that they can expand to get a definition and examples.

Except for the Budget package, our system adds three tasks to the Analyst task list with the fields of date added, client name, task name and a check box (on the far left just like in Basecamp). Any task more than 7 days old, turns RED. When the task is checked, system sends an alert to Admin. Admin can remove alerts by clicking on the X next to them, just like in Basecamp.

Package Details

Operations Process



1. Analyst searches for a domain through Frontend System, in a search box located inside Blitz.

2. Help text/tool-tip needs included to provide general rules, such as .com only, no dashes, etc.

3. Once a domain is chosen, it is added to a queue and task is sent to the admin (Admin for now) for approval. Once approved, domain is purchased for 2 years with private registration, and hosted on our servers.

4. Site is generated automatically based on information submitted in the Lead Form. For example, if client is a Dentist / Lawyer / Other template service: Pick 1 out of the n canned templates: 1. Template is populated with client setup information 2. Images are all stock 3. Site will have almost no content, all content derived from lead form with generic as a placeholder until Analyst of client edits it. (Example for generic content: therapysites.com) 4. Domain purchased (will require some manual intervention, see below) 5. WordPress is setup automatically. 6. .htaccess file needs to be set to writeable while WordPress permalinks settings are changed to include the post name in the URL 7. Analytics account is created and inserted into site

5. Notification that “site is ready” is not sent out immediately, we will wait 7 days before sending. Benefits of this delay: 1. Increased perceived value of package 2. Gives the Analyst more time to:

I. Work with client to get their Unique Selling Proposition (help text to explain USP) II. Educate on other options available III. Ask for coupons or discounts that can be offered on the website

6. Change requests If the user has paid full price for their package, and requests a change:

1. Analyst will need to respond: "You chose the package that doesn't allow custom items, that's how we offer that ultra low price. The package above it does include. But since we value you as a customer, we'll give you some design hours for free."

2. 1-2 concessions will be built in, these may include: I. One revision II. Call the phone 1-2 times III. These concessions cannot break down the overall process

If Client wants customizations beyond what is available self-serve, Analyst responds: “You chose a package that doesn’t allow custom items, that’s how we offer that ultra low price. On top of this, you received a discounted price. If you want to make changes to the site, you will need to upgrade to a custom package.”

Budget Package

Operations Process



1. Analyst selects template closest to the client preferences.

2. Analyst inputs a design request into Basecamp. They include design guidance from the lead form, the package name (which tells our Designer know how many hours to allow for the project), and any other creatives and content given to the Analyst at the time of signing.

3. Once sent to Designer, box is checked in Engineer’s system sends email and web alert to client with canned message.

4. Designer uses the data given to make appropriate changes to the website, targeting the number of hours allowed for given package and delivery date.

5. Designer to send updated project status sheet each week by Monday afternoon.

6. If Designer project has set waiting on feedback from Blitz for over 24 hours, Designer needs to prompt us for feedback each day until it is provided.

7. Priority is based on assigned priority in the project sheet.

8. All delivery dates are editable internally by us and Designer. Track changes just like comments: post the date, commenter, comment. When deliver date changes, the client and Analyst both receive an email and alert: “Project X : Task delivery changed from Y to Z.”

9. Client will have logins to /_dev directory so they can view the site progress.

10. Once Designer tasks are complete, Analyst will present site to client. If client approves, Analyst checks off task and the system pushes the /_dev WordPress to their existing domain. Need task/check box added for Analyst that states “Client approves design” to notify system to push site live. No email needs sent. If client does not approve, Analyst posts feedback to Designer and the process repeats.

11. May require more back and forth communications between Client and Analyst, which will require alerts. (Client does not communicate directly with Designer.) This extra communication is more work for the Analyst and is why only the top two packages are offered when taking over an existing site.

Standard and Performance Packages:

Operations Process



1. We only offer the Performance packages 1. No lower level packages, by definition it will be custom implementation 2. Involves block of hours to Designer 3. Follow our custom site process, with more manual development than automated options

2. Once signed proposal is approved and initial payment has been received, a task is generated for the Analyst to get the following:

I. Access to website – We need FTP access to gather content II. Access to registrar – We will need access to domain’s registrar to point the domain to the new hosting location

3. Go through SEO checklist – Generate task for Admin to create analysis

4. Pull content out of their existing site

5. Re-skin it in WordPress in a /_dev directory on Blitz

6. Client will have logins to /_dev directory so they can view the site progress

7. Once Client approves the new design and content, then we push the /_dev WordPress to their existing domain.

Budget package we deliver by default in 7 days from admin approval date.

All other packages have a default delivery date of 14 days after approval date. Admin can manually change approval date based on client or Analyst requests. Admin updates the status field in the client list with their estimated delivery date.

When a change request is selected:

1. A free form text box needs presented for change specifics

2. Creates task sent to Admin, who will approve for no charge or propose incremental cost.

3. If approved by client, proposal addendum, following the same proposal verification process

If a Client Already Has a Website (55% of small businesses already have a website)

Operations Process



Day 0 1. You’ve taken the right step (“Thanks for choosing Blitz”) 2. Send Articles and list of helpful tools 3. Forward assigned Analyst contact info

Day 1 1. Create your free business listing 2. View samples of other websites. If category is known send category specific examples, if not, show general examples.

Day 2 1. Make sure client is ready, if not, find out why. “Still not ready?” 2. We’ll offer a free site evaluation, unless “no site” option is checked

Trigger system needs turned off when drop down is filled out to turn lead into a client. By default, this is not checked.

Any inbound direct leads (leads that came directly from website, not Analyst) are assigned to Admins.

When signed proposal is approved, emails will be sent at the following intervals to provide clients with ongoing updates and education.

Day 0 1. Thank you for signing up/purchasing a website 2. Description of what services we provide 3. Introduction to Analyst – pull bio and contact info 4. Send direct mail “Thank you” card on our letterhead from CEO weekly. (Manager to create process to send cards) 5. Check box – “Would you like to receive free access to our training courses?” - This begins additional email trigger system. (Manager to create layout for trigger campaign)

Day 2 1. Explain value in web marketing 2. Explain Unique Selling Proposition I. How we need to communicate it II. Why we need the client’s help to write for it III. Why we need this to help traffic convert on the site 3. Increase credibility I. Create comfort for a visitor II. Differentiate from competitors III. Value of client testimonials 4. Establish what emails addresses exist in clients domain, and migrate to Gmail/Blitz if possible

2.4 Email Triggers

When an analyst puts a lead into the system these emails are sent in this order:

Operations Process



Day 5 1. Your page should be almost ready 2. Here are the things you can do I. Log in II. Add content III. Upload photos IV. Provide specials

Day 7 1. Email sent from Analyst to Client stating: I. Your page is live II. Logins and where it can be accessed III. Email will include a picture of the Analyst in the top corner

* Email sent to Analyst as well

2. Generate a task for the Analyst will send a pre-scripted ‘thank you’ letter that can be easily printed. Analyst then signs, sticks in an envelope, and mails

3. Generates alerts for when both the client and Analyst logs in (like a Facebook feed)

4. Alerts will be aggregated at the end of the month and forwarded to Admin and Analyst

When the client website goes live, another series of emails will be triggered.

Day 7 1. Early stats on their site activity. 2. Link to Blitz.com for them to log in and browse. 3. Generate task to Analyst for checkup call to collect feedback and referrals.

Day 25 1. Automatic bill notice that they are about to be billed for their next month of PPC charges 2. Bill Cycles are based on the day they signup 3. Staggering allows us to continually optimize campaigns, instead of doing all clients in batch 4. If they sign up on the 28th of the month or later, their Bill Cycle is the 28th 5. Upsell Clients into Advertising 6. If the client requires additional changes: i. Analyst will work with core team to scope that with Designer ii. We will bill these changes at $55/hr. 7. For all packages except Budget set recurring task to call Client monthly. Post this task midway between billing cycle (Cycle date + 15 days). Example: If bill date is the 7th, task needs scheduled on the 22nd 8. If task not completed within 7 days, then post alert to Analyst Manager (Level 4+), which is true for all tasks that turn RED.

The email sequence needs to move the client forward with development. As items are completed, the client needs to be educated on them. The system will not just be a simple congratulations note saying the website is done, and offering logins. It must educate them so that they will write content and understand performance marketing and tracking.

Operations Process



Educate on expectations in performance and duties.

After the new hire is documented into the system, the following will go out in order:Day 0: Set up a signature line in email and forward new mail to personal boxes

In Gmail, you can add a signature line to contain a salutation, your name, phone number, and disclaimer. For example, here is Dennis’:

Thanks, Dennis Yu Chief Executive Officer, Blitz xxx-xxx-xxxx twitter.com/dennisyu AIM: dennisyu74 blog: dennis-yu.com linkedin.com/in/dennisyu Also, make sure to include the Privacy act 18 2510-2521 Confidentiality Notice below your personal signature:

DISCLAIMER: CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE TO RECIPIENT This email (including attachments) is covered by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510-2521, is confidential and may be legally privileged (including, without limitation, attorney-client privilege). If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any retention, dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender, and delete it immediately.

Day 0: Forward email to a personal Gmail account On Start.Blitz.com: 1. Log into @Blitz.com email account. 2. Click on "Settings" in top right corner, then click on "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" in the top nav 3. Click the button in front of "Forward a copy of incoming mail to" 4. Insert your email address in that same line 5. Click "Save Changes" at the bottom of the page

On Gmail: 1. Log into @gmail.com email account. 2. Click on "Settings" in the top right corner, then click on "Accounts" in the top nav 3. Click the button in front of "Reply from the same address the message was sent to" 3. Click on "Add another email address" in the middle of the page

Prospective Analyst Email Triggers

Hired Analyst Email Triggers

Operations Process



4. Enter your name and your @Blitz.com email address and click "Next Step" 5. Click "Send Verification" 6. Return to your Inbox

You will need to log back into their @Blitz.com account to verify.

Once set up, this should forward @Blitz.com mail to an external @gmail.com account. When they respond to a @Blitz.com email it will appear to be sent from that account.

Day 0: Get the Employees Bio Send us a one paragraph Bio about yourself. We'd like to know your background, hobbies, awards and interests. Make it fun, but also business oriented. Include a tasteful picture of yourself, as we will post your bio and pic on Blitz.com so our clients can get to know the individual stories behind our team.

Operations Process



•WhennewsmallbusinessessignupandgettheirPPCactivationemail,sendthemamapwiththeirgeo shaded in.•Analystinvitesppc@Blitz.comandthemselveswhentheycreatenewGoogleAnalyticsaccounts.

Here’s the trigger message to send clients when we create a new blog that is ready for content:

Hello [Client Name], We’ve created a blog for you on your website! It’s ready for you to add your personal touch to it. Provided below is a step by step process to help you on your way to blogging.

To Add a Post: 1) First, Log in at [wp admin url]. Once logged in, click on "Write" on the left side. 2) Then click "Post" (located underneath Write)

3) Type the title of your post in the "Title" field/box

4) Type the content in the box below the title, labeled "Post"

5) Once you've finished typing the post, click the "Publish" button on the right hand side.

6) Then you can view your post at http://www.yourwebsite.com

7) Each time you add a new post, it will get placed on the front of the site just above the last post you made.

To Add Pictures to Your Blog: 1) Then you click "Manage" at the top left of the page

2) Then click on "Posts" just under that

3) Click on the post where you'd like to add a picture. There you will be able to edit your article.

4) Right above the article, you'll see some text that says "Add Media". To the right of that is a small square that looks like a picture frame. Click it, then click "Choose files to upload" at the top of the pop up.

5) Once you've chosen your image, hit enter...then click the "Save" button on the right hand side of the post page.

6) Go back to the edit your article page, and click in the box where you want the picture to show up relative to your text.

7) Click on the small "picture frame" near the "Add media" text

New Local Client Sign-Up

Blog / Website Related Email Triggers

Operations Process



8) At the top of the pop-up, click "Gallery". You should see the picture you uploaded

9) Click "Show" on the right side. There you can change the title of the picture, add a caption etc. Also, you can choose to align it on the left, center, or right hand side of the page. You can also choose which size you want it to show up.

10) After making your selections, click "Insert into Post". You should see the picture appear in the post.

11) Now hit "Save" and view your post. It’s that simple!

Upload Some Pictures To Your Blog’s Gallery Step 1. Add Gallery 1. Add New Gallery: Insert any name (for example: "Tracking") Click on add gallery button to add the category "Tracking".

2. Click on Upload Images. Choose gallery name e.g. Tracking at "in to".

3. Upload Images. Images will be stored in that selected gallery. (For example: Tracking)

Step 2. Manage Gallery 1. Gallery Settings : Preview Image - Select any image name so as to display in the front end.

2. Description, Alt & Title text as mentioned will be displayed with the images at the front end.

Step 3. Manage Albums 1. Add New Album: Insert name for example "League". Click on update button.

2. Select Album: Select the Album name League.

3. Select Gallery: All gallery created previously will be shown here. You can drag and drop the gallery into Albums from the left side.

Combating Spam

You may be thinking “Hooray, I got a comment on my blog!” once the input starts flying in. But wait! it looks kind of funny… What gives?

Spammers will jam your blog with fake comments-- to get you to buy their products and to embed links to their spam sites. We use several methods to fight spam, such as Akismet (a community database of posts others have marked as spam) and blocking traffic from Russia and other IP's that are highly likely to be sending bad traffic. Yet, some spam gets through. We've seen studies that say over 100 billion spams are sent per day (Wikipedia as of April 2008) and over 80% of the mail sent is spam. Sometimes the spam will appear innocuous or even confusing. For example, some posts will say "Good point, but I disagree somewhat." or maybe "I think that's a great idea! I will be eagerly reading your blog every day." Just look at the website they are linking from, it's a way to trick you into approving the comment so that they can steal search engine "juice" from you. If you want to read more, see: http://codex.wordpress.org/Combat_Comment_Spam

Operations Process



The New Hire ProcessThis is the process Blitz uses when a new employee is accepted (Mely, for now): 1. Dennis or authorized Level 5+ Analyst posts message in Basecamp project with new hire details.

2. Mely prepares new hire docs (w9, application, employment contract, initial training docs) and, if necessary, reaches out to new hire to get personal information (full name, address, phone number, e-mail, etc).

3. Send agreement along with W9 (once contact info received). 4. Mely issues Blitz e-mail address and notify new hire. 5. Mely enables access to Basecamp section for dashboards and local-related projects and to Blitz.com as Analyst.

6. Request business cards (unlocked at level 2)

ANALYST SET-UP • Sales contract: An agreement on commission schedules and to follow company processes. Also includes a Non-Disclosure Agreement. NDA’s are generally not enforceable, but are primarily an assurance that the Analyst will act in good faith regarding our client base and intellectual property. In turn, Blitz will commit to investing in our reps, making them Internet marketing experts. All reps will be commissioned the same way on the same schedule.

• Commission schedule (example figures): Prices on packages can be discounted up to 25% from listed price.

• If regular price is paid on a given package, the Analyst gets 25% of the total development fee.

• If price of package is discounted, Analyst gets 15% of development fee. Lead source can be their own, a referral, or company marketing efforts—Blitz will market on the Analyst's behalf. For any order, the Analyst gets 10% on both the gross and recurring revenue. Sales managers get 10% of their rep’s payouts. To qualify, order must be complete and credit card settles.

• Analyst details: Form needed to get name, address, bio, phone numbers, email password, and picture from Analyst — necessary to get them set-up in the system. Add edit field. Provide them with a sales contract, W9 and 1099. Possibly offer W9 and 1099 to fill out online, but faxing/mailing back might be best, we will evaluate. Accounting can send out 1099’s and cut commission checks. Engineer to create admin interface to add new Analysts.

New Hires

Adding a New Analyst to the System

SECTION 3 - EMPLOYEE RELATIONS

Operations Process



Who are they? •Haveatleast$10K per month to invest in Facebook ads.

•Haveanin-houseanalytics team using paid analytics software like Omniture.

•Understandthevalueofword-of-mouthasbuildingrelationships.

•Haveacooperativeteam,asweneedtotieinwithemailmarketing,thewebsite,andother marketing channels.

•Arespendingalotofmoneyonmarketingalready—socompaniesinCPG,retail,andTV networks.

Your Dream Client

SECTION 4 - QUALIFYING CLIENTS

Operations Process



All media related to projects for Enterprise-level clients must be stored on Basecamp. Please upload all files such as sounds or pictures, place any text documents within a writeboard, and track all progress using the built-in tasks system. Please track all time and update any ongoing conversation concerning projects.

1. Read the contract: Analyst must completely read the entire contract between Blitz and the newly acquired customer. The Analyst must acknowledge to the Account Manager and Accounting Departments that he/she has done this through an email. Any questions should be asked about the overall contract terms and answered at this time. This should be done before the kick-off meeting.

2. Participate in Kick-off meeting: The Analyst will participate in this internal meeting (conference call) with the Account Manager and Accounting departments and if available, Admin. The purpose of this meeting is to:

A. Provide overview analysis of the account status, which will be used as the first report to the client. Items will include Statement of Goals, and a Competitive Review.

B. Establish overall goals for the account - Metrics, Analysis, Action. What are the details of how we will accomplish these items? Carefully define what is considered success. Outline how to then manage client expectations accordingly in terms of metrics and timelines.

C. Outline initial roadmap – Detail the specific actions that will be taken while we collect the necessary data to analyze traffic.

3. Regularly check and adhere to spend levels: The analyst must manage the correct monthly budgets as spelled out on the contract— to not go over or under the amount.

4. Keep a running diary of all PPC changes: The emphasis is not only what was changed by why and what is the hoped for end result. Place these messages in basecamp, copying the project lead and client.

5. Optimize established goals.

Requirements for Managing Media

Level 5 Analyst

SECTION 5 - ENTERPRISE CLIENTS

Operations Process



What does a Level 6 Analyst do? You manage accounts to make sure they’re happy. Coordinate all team to create and complete the goals for the client. Remember in this role, THE BUCK STOPS HERE. You are not allowed to say “this is not my responsibility” regarding anything related to the success of the account. If you feel you do not have the adequate resources to complete any tasks, get help from a higher-level analyst immediately.

1. Re-read the contract: The Account manager must completely re-read the entire contract to be clear on goals. The Account Manager must acknowledge to the other team members and accounting department that he/she has done this through an email. Resolve any questions before the kick-off meeting.

2. Schedule the Kick-off meeting: The account manager is solely responsible for scheduling and running this internal meeting (conference call) with all team members.

The purpose of this meeting is to: 1. Provide overview analysis of the account status which will be used as the first report to the client. Items will include keyword review, SEO review, and a Competitive review. 2. Establish overall goals for the account: Metrics –> Analysis -> Action. What are the details of how we will accomplish these items? Carefully define what is considered success. Outline how to then manage client expectations accordingly in terms of metrics and timelines.

3. Outline initial roadmap. Detail the specific actions that will be taken while we collect the necessary data to analyze traffic. It is your responsibility that this report is completed and sent to all team members before the start dates. Place all necessary tasks into Basecamp.

4. Plan B – Outline an alternative plan in case something goes wrong with RunMetrics/GA and/or we are unable to access the website to implement recommendations.

5. You are the regular point of contact with the client. Be sure to have regularly scheduled client calls to chart progress.

6. Regularly check-in with the PPC Analyst and check the account itself to be sure we are adhering to spend levels – It is of paramount importance that we manage the correct monthly budgets as spelled out in the contract. This responsibility lies primarily with the Analyst but Account Manager should always be aware of the ongoing projected spend number.

7. Check-in to see that PPC analyst is keeping a running diary of all PPC changes. The emphasis is not only what was changed by why and what is the hoped for end result. Have a working knowledge of why we are making changes and their desired results.

8. With the help of the PPC analyst, Issue weekly reports to the client and account manager of all of the above. You will help to structure these reports and add anything additional regarding progress.

Level 5 Analyst Responsibilities

Operations Process



1. Analytics installed on all pages (WordPress plug-in and Analytics ID required)

2. HTML sitemap (WordPress plug-in)

3. HTML Sitemap link on footer of each page

4. XML sitemap (WordPress plug-in)

5. site has relevant Page Titles (Geo + Category + | Site Name) or (Geo + Category + Sub-Category + | Sitename)

6. Keyword rich links interlinking pages in footer of each page

7. All links must work

8. Content exists on all pages (No Lorem Ipsum remains)

9. Call tracking phone number allocated

10. Address and phone number are present at the top right of all pages / needs to link to contact page

11. Phone number is in large font

12. Call to action present on front page

13. Phone number or call to action displayed prominently at bottom of all pages

14. Contact Page has email form with at least these three fields (email, subject, comments)

15. Contact Page has Google maps installed

16. All images include keyword rich Alt text

17. All main images link to some relevant page

18. Testimonial plug-in installed, and pushes to a Testimonials page

6.1 Process Checklist (for landing page or website)

SECTION 6 - ENGINEERING

Operations Process



6.2 Process for Listing a New Client in Directories

Free Business Listings1. A visitor clicks on a banner on the Blitz.com that will link to a form for “Free Business Listings” on Blitz.com (or blitz{category}.com).

2. The form will be similar to the New Lead Form, but will only include the following fields: Name, email, address, phone number, business category, subcategory, and website.

3. Once completed and submitted, each free business listing generates a task for Admin approval, then posts the generated page.

4. Free Business Listing leads are then placed in a unique email flow, targeted at converting these leads to upgrading to a pay package or using Blitz tools.

5. The Lead is then assigned to an Analyst (by Admin).

One thing that we'll offer completely free to prospective Small Business Clients is a one-page site. This is the "top of the funnel" for us, since once we get their email, we can then sell them into a paid service that has Analyst support and customization. The one page sites are meant to be completely self-service and driven by a form on Blitz.com.

•Client clicks on "build my free one page site" banner, they get to a landing page that has perhaps a screenshot or two of example sites, a few bullet points and a button to "build my free site now!" which then takes them to the form, which is just the new client enrollment form, minus many of the details, such as billing — it will have just what's needed to create the site, plus a simple CAPTCHA. It also includes drop-downs for their category (the main 10 categories, plus one for other, which they can fill in). Their geo we determine by the 5 digit zip code. Client hits the "preview my site" button to continue. In this first phase, we only want to allow a few themes, as opposed to many themes per category.

• Workflow System generates a page that appears to live at Blitz.com/clients/business-name, where "clients" will be replaced with the geo-modified term later (Denver arthritis surgeon). The client then can choose one of two buttons-- "tweak it a bit more" (which takes them back the form) or "publish my site", which takes them to the completed page.

Facebook

1. Make Facebook Fan Page for the business. This is not the same as a profile page. Make sure to include all relevant information, since an incomplete profile is as good as no profile. Dylan has automated the process of making Facebook pages.

Operations Process



ProposalsProposals can be created manually for now, by following the proposal generation process. Our Proposal Generation Tool (built by Joey Chan) creates a Statement of Work based on order form fields.

Proposal generated: The Analyst, if physically visiting a customer, must get the client to fill out and sign the Order Form, putting in the appropriate information for the services selected. If the order is taken on-line or via the phone, the Analyst must use the fax machine to get written confirmation of the order (as filled out by the rep), which includes billing information. The completed order forms should be mailed or faxed to Manager for processing. Commissions are paid only on properly completed orders in the system. Cookie cutter email welcome and triggers pulled from SitePoint documents (see Dennis for copy), customized by Admin.

Accounts and BillingAccount creation: Once the “lead to client” change by an Analyst has been approved by an admin, the system creates an email address and default password for the client, while also adding the client under the appropriate Analyst. Notification emails sent to client and Analyst. At signup, the system will also create a local business listing at username.Blitz.com or blitz{category}.com. The system then builds a template site and draft campaign (described in the following)—these go into a queue to be manually worked on and approved to go live. The lead queues must be monitored daily by their respective owners (Admin, for now).

Billing: The system then automatically bills the new client up-front for the monthly fee, keeping track of commissions to be paid to the Analyst. Billing is based on the day each user signs up (if they sign up on the 5th, they get billed next month on the 5th). Should a user sign up after the 28th of the month, they will automatically be pushed back to the 28th for further billing. Commissions paid only to Analyst registered in the system with a signed contract and W9/1099 information.

SEOAutomated SEO set-up: The one-page business profile should be generated at username.Blitz.com or on {category}.com without any human involvement. The stand-alone site will require client and Analyst interaction to choose their favorite site “theme” (among several templates), domain name, and general look-and-feel. The automated SEO will eventually include Automated Directory and Search Engine Submission based upon order form information, but for now, perform this manually.

6.3 Automated and Manual Processes, and Systems Maintenance

Operations Process



SEMAutomated SEM set-up: If there is a delay between order entry and the campaigns going live, we must “catch-up” to hit the monthly target. We should have a service level target of 2 business days to a PPC account going live. Clients either have a geo or national orientation. Geo clients, such as dentists and plumbers, should represent 95% of our client base, as that is where the strength of the Blitz system lies: geo-term combos and local search. Based on the geo and generic terms listed in the order form, the system should generate two campaigns: a nationally targeted campaign with geo-modified terms and a local campaign with generic terms. The local campaign should have both search and content enabled, but automatically bid content at 1/3 of default search ad group bids. Each ad group should have initially a couple default ads, taken from the order form. Negative campaign keywords should be drawn from the vertical selected (if it has been selected in the drop-down). If the client is part of a vertical that we already have a generic campaign, the system should generate additional ad groups with those geo and generic term combos. If this is for a vertical for which we do not have existing clients, the Analyst must specify the new category, so that this account can also spawn the first generic campaign for others in that category. All ad group search bids should be set to 30 cents, until they can be manually adjusted.

Manual SEM set-up (Blitz web interface): The automation gives us a head start in campaign building. However, there will always be human involvement to adjust the geo and generic terms, plus write specific ad copy to suit their marketing message. A particular client may have a very tight geo-focus or might have a specialization (a dentist that does only “root canals”, a mover that doesn’t handle commercial business). As for ad copy, it is necessary to promote their point of differentiation (since 1942, free trial, winner of XYZ award, from $25). We may also selectively copy and paste from existing campaigns in the same vertical. The Analyst (and later, the Client) should be able to adjust the geo terms, generic terms, or ad copy from the account view. Later sophistication should allow us to “suggest” additional terms.

SEM campaign active (AdWords Editor): After the manual set-up is complete, evidenced by being flagged as “done” on the account page, the account is reviewed by the vertical owner (Admin for now), adjusted as necessary, and set to go live. These campaigns are copied from the draft account into a live account for that vertical (dentists, movers).

Periodic maintenance and optimization: Weekly, the system generates an email report to the Analyst and production team (not client) that shows account performance. For SEM, it graphs percent spend to pace— 60% through the month, an account should have already spent 60% of their monthly budget, plus a couple percent buffer. Clients that are more than 15% off in either direction are highlighted for review. Bid adjustments will be made by the system (bidding up for under-spending, bidding down for overspending) two days after the report, giving the category owner enough time to troubleshoot other performance factors (bad ads have low CTR, need a stronger keyword portfolio). The production team or Analyst may recommend adjusting the budget up or down, which will generate a “note” to the client.

Operations Process



PPCAt the same time that a signed contract is approved by Admin, system generates a PPC campaign on Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

1. System generates keywords by multiplying geo and subcategory terms. (An example of a subcategory for a dentist would be “root canal” or “cosmetic dentistry”.).

2. System uses canned ads for that particular category.

3. Campaign is automatically posted to Google, Yahoo, and MSN Ad Centers.

5. Each client gets 3 campaigns per search engine within an account. 1. Campaign is geo-modified terms with US level targeting 2. Campaign is terms without geo modifiers, targeted to their zip + radius 3. Display campaign also includes local business ads and display ads, using canned creatives, as developed by DESIGNER

6. Canned display creatives are category specific. Creatives will be customized with business name and phone number.

7. For any client spending at least $1k /month in PPC with us, we automatically post a task to DESIGNER to make 2 banner ads for them via templates we have. At a later stage (once we have plenty of creatives across a range of categories), we can have this fully automated by our ad server (no need for human involvement). Banners created for local businesses need to include the geo term and main business category, a "call to action" button, and a local phone number to increase local trust.

8. Every month on the 15th, system needs to post an alert to Admin to optimize all campaigns.

When campaign is ready: 1. Alerts are posted to both the client and the Analyst when they login 2. We send email notification to the client that states: 1. Campaign is going live and also 2. Educates them on the following points I. What to expect II. How to improve performance III. What conversions are to them: a. Calls b. Emails c. Walk-ins IV. Shows how keywords and clicks tie to these conversions 3. The point of this email is to get the small business ask “How did you hear about us?” so they’ll know when the website is driving them leads. Business owners know the value of this, but other staff generally does not.

Operations Process



3. If client is enterprise, then give them access the following way: 1. Set up a [client][email protected] email in Google Apps with password of [client]rox 2. Invite the user in the MCC for that account with standard access 3. Log back into start.Blitz.com with that new email, select "create new account" with same info. 4. Go to the MCC and approve access, by going to the account and the "access" tab

4. Website performance reports sent in email on the 3rd of each month, showing a funnel dashboard in grid format, simplified for small business that includes: 1. Clicks 2. Spend 3. Leads 4. Calls (Leads and calls are the 2 measurable conversions) 5. Project summary – aggregation of alerts collected in past month. Do not include internal nodes such as call client within 7 days. Make smart decisions on which alerts make it into report.

Client ServicesClient maintenance: The system will generate a note for the Analyst to call new client once their account has been activated, two weeks later, and if other “notes” are written. The Analyst must use their judgment on how often to contact each client to keep them happy, but we recommend a quick call or email at least once a month thanking them for their business and giving a nugget or two about their campaign performance.

We must “personalize” the client experience, so that they get what appears to be personalized service at the least effort on our part. Regular call schedule from reps, email trigger campaigns, newsletters and reports send in rep’s name with their picture, and so forth. We want to provide agency-level service without that overhead.

Management Systems

Billing processWe operate on a bill cycle, where customers are billed on their cycle date, not the end of the calendar month. For existing clients, we'll leave them where they are-- on the 1st of the month. All new clients will be on their cycle date.

Tracking how actual client spend compares to budget is not feasible manually, because of the differing date ranges for each customer. There are 28 bill cycles, since if a customer were billed only on the 31st of the month, there are some months they would not get billed.

Thus, our engineering should figure out how to produce these internal pacing reports. The goal of this report is to assess who is more than 10% off where their spend should be in their bill cycle. So if they are supposed to spend $1,000 (which means we're billing $1,428), then halfway through their cycle, they should be at $500 +/- $50. If not, then we should have an alert that is triggered on an alerts page.

This report should kick off weekly and deliver an email report to all of us, not to the client or the analyst. The goal is to make sure we're spending on track according to budget.

Operations Process



Note that this report is not a monthly financial report, which we should produce on the 1st work day of each month, covering the full calendar month of financial performance.

We should also be charging all clients their first month of spend in advance, such that we're never dealing with delinquency.

When we rebill, it should be 5 days before the end of their bill cycle, so that we have enough time to automatically send the client an email notification that their payment method has failed and that their campaigns are about to run out. The message should be sent out in the analyst's name and have a friendly tone-- and the system should send the analyst a copy, too. If no payment by the day before their bill cycle, then create a task fin our project management system or the analyst to call the client.

Analyst dashboard: Daily report that shows sales (accounts closed and dollar amount) for each rep. Allows reps to see how they compare against others. Subtotal by sales managers (who coach multiple reps) and roll-up into grand total.

Weekly project management: Process to manage tasks in latest iteration—planned, in progress, completed. Wednesday afternoon of each week. Think about how to share updates with larger team, as current version is paper-based. Use wiki.

Monthly financial review: A recurring task needs generated for Accounting on the 5th workday of each month for a review of last month’s financial performance and a proforma (future projections) for the next month. Alert needs sent one day in advance of meeting. We will look at results in a template that shows client counts, cash flows, and a statement of profit and loss. We are looking to keep financial operations as a cost of sale to below 3% of gross revenue or 10% of margins (including credit card transaction fees).

Upsell client to new services: Maybe we don't want to sell too many things at once, for fear of indigestion. Small businesses often cannot afford all the stuff they both need and want, so we can spread out the services and payments over time. The benefit of just launching the site with no traffic generation is that he will realize why buying traffic is critical. If we give him traffic right off the bat, then he doesn't appreciate what we did as much.

From a process standpoint, we have to think about what happens to our order form when we sell a client on one thing, to get our foot in the door and then follow up with more services.

Operations Process



Think of these as "house ads" that are shown on the client's site, as well as trafficked on the Content Networks. A "house ad" is used to promote your own products and services, as opposed to generating affiliate ad revenue. We don't need to provide client's access to the ad server, since they don't need to understand what ad serving is, nor would they (or any of our folks) ever touch it. Ideally, this whole process would be automated upon website and PPC campaign set up, based on configuration options for their budget and offers they have.

For a client to have banner campaigns enabled, they have to provide offers during either signup process or later, just like we'd do in Google AdWords. However, the client (or Analyst doing it on their behalf), would do it through our central interface at Blitz.com

Thus, all ad serving for house ads is non-revenue generating and not subject to eCPM calculations, as would be true for affiliate campaigns. There is no profit/loss, but there is CTR and Conversion rate. Once we get enough clients that are using a particular template, with templates based on category (dentist, for example), we can pool CTR and Conversion data across clients to make optimization decisions across the board for that category.

We need templates for all major categories that are in the yellow pages, starting first with service clients we have, then extending to dentists and attorneys and medical specialists.

Press Release ProcessList of all websites to use:•free-press-release.com(hasCaptcha)•prlog.com(hasCaptcha)•i-newswire.com•prurgent.com•pr.com(hasCaptcha)•24-7pressrelease.com(NOTE:Oneperday,ortheywillbanyou!)•pressmethod.com•pr-inside.com•bignews.biz(hasCaptcha)

I recommend using Firefox 3.0, and bookmarking each of these websites into their own separate folder. Then, you can recall each one by going to Bookmarks, then the folder you put them in, and hitting 'Open all in tabs'

Next, go to docs.google.com, and make a new spreadsheet. This is handy for tracking the status of your releases and sharing your progress with your team. Place the PR site urls along the top, and use the first column to jot down the title of your press release. You can store the master copies of these in docs.google.com as well, so every one in your team can edit them online.

7.1 Banner Ad Templates

SECTION 7 - AD NETWORKS

Operations Process



When submitting press releases, do the following:

First, Make sure you have accounts on each PR website listed above, and assign a custom email to it in Gmail. For example: Blitz will get [email protected], then forward all email on that account to a master inbox. Open your press release in a notepad or other document, and split it up into defined sections (Title, Summary, Body, Closing Words, Tags, and Contact information). It's good to write 2 or 3 variations of the same story, since search engines hate duplicate content.

Open all of the press release websites in new tabs, I usually start by submitting to Free-Press-Release, they're highest rank, and publish the quickest. Copy all of the info into their respective fields, and enter the CAPTCHA security text. Submit, and go to the next tab, rinse and repeat. Some websites will give you the permalink immediately, while a few listed above simply say 'we'll review it'. It's good practice to 'roll' out your press releases in different intervals, and most websites have a 'publish at' time - Try to spread out publications over a 3 day period.

After submitting to each website, make sure you update your spreadsheet with the permalinks that you were given, or just mark them as 'Pending'. This next step isn't crucial, but gives you a piece of mind that Google will review it - Once you have the url, add it to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl

Check every day to make sure the press releases have been published, or if they were rejected. If they were turned down, don't worry - most websites will tell you why and let you resubmit after you've made the appropriate edits. You can see the status of your releases on the control panel of every website, except for i-newswire.com and pr-inside.com. For it, search Google for <pr title> i-newswire.com / pr-inside.com.

Notification of Suspension of your Blitz accountLook at high-hearted examples from Lujure, which Dennis has shared with Mely and Max.

Blitz Support to Blitz

Images are not displayed.Display images below - Always display images from [email protected]

Better hurry. Your trial of Blitz expired on 12/21/2009.http://local.Blitz.com can still be viewed by visitors, however, you can't add or edit anything until you upgrade and reactivate your Blitz for as little as $14.95/month.

Can't login and upgrade using the links above?Copy and paste the URL below into your browser address bar:http://local.Blitz.com/settings/myaccount?PLANID=NONE,Upgrade,CP_CP_PM

Or follow these simple instructions: Visit http://local.Blitz.com and login. Click Manage in the upper right corner. Click My Account Choose a plan in the Blitz services list. Click Confirm & Pay.Questions or comments?Email support or send us your feedback

Operations Process



Hello <first_name>,Welcome to Blitz!Here are some starting points:

1. Connect with us via your Facebook account: http://www.Blitz.com/sso_link (Girard’s disappear ghost link)

2. Complete your online Profile, upload your photo and start participating in our community: http://www.Blitz.com/myhome/account/profile

3. Getting Started With Blitz: http://www.Blitz.com/articles/link_or_video

Login now: http://www.Blitz.com/login

Thanks,

<analyst name who invited them, since invite only>Team Blitz

http://www.Blitz.com

Community Support: http://getsatisfaction.com/BlitzFollow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Blitz

Reminder for small business who hasn’t uploaded a coupon to Facebook yet.

Dear <first_name>,

We have noticed that you haven't created coupons for your business in the past 30 days.

Blitz gives you the ability to create coupons for free. You can customize your coupons with pictures of your business and any special offers or promotions. Furthermore, our research has shown that creating coupons increases visits on your listing by 50% percent.

Create your coupons now.

If you don't have time, learn how we can do it for you.

Sincerely,

The Blitz Team http://www.Blitz.com

This report was sent to you by Blitz as part of your membership.To adjust your email preferences, please visit our website: click here.© 2012, BlitzBlitz, Inc. <analyst local address>

8.1 New Analyst Welcome Note

SECTION 8 - THE BLITZ PROCESS

Operations Process

http://www.Blitz.com/sso_link

http://www.Blitz.com/myhome/account/profile

http://www.Blitz.com/articles/link_or_video

http://www.Blitz.com/login


http://getsatisfaction.com/Blitz

http://twitter.com/Blitz




Blitz Reminder: Upload a picture for your business

Dear <first_name>,

We have noticed that you haven't uploaded pictures in the past 30 days.Blitz gives you the ability to upload pictures to your listing. Once you upload the pictures you can easily add them to your coupons and newsletters for free. It is easy, free, and customers love to see pictures of your business. In fact, our research has shown that putting pictures on your listing increases visits on your page by 80%.

Upload pictures now.

If you don't have time, learn how we can do it for you.

Sincerely,

The Blitz Team http://www.Blitz.com

This report was sent to you by Blitz as part of your membership.To adjust your email preferences, please visit our website: click here.© 2012, BlitzBlitz, Inc. <analyst local address>

Operations Process




OVERVIEWThese instructions are for handling new requests. When a potential client navigates to our website (blitzmetrics.com) and enters their email requesting a dashboard, Wordpress automatically sends their email address to us through email. These emails are leads and we must respond to them, fulfill their requests, and log everything about the process in basecamp.

GENERAL RULES:• Respond to requests within 15 minutes of receiving.• Personalize every response individually to that particular customer.• Track everything in Basecamp

STEPS1. Paste the email in your search bar in Gmail to find out if they have already been responded to.2. Find out who they are. (Use this template)

3. Create a task for them. (Basecamp project “Incoming Dashboard Lead Queue”)4. Send a personalized email (if enough info).5. Follow up if no response, or send them pictures of their dashboard/analysis if they respond with the pages

they want to monitor, requesting to set up a 20 minute call with Dennis.

8.2 Responding to Requests

Contact:

Company:

Description:

Website:

Google Page Rank:

Operations Process



GETTING INFORMATION ABOUT THE CUSTOMER• Things to try: •Linkedin •Facebook •Google •Gmailsearch •Thenameoftheircompanyisoftenintheiremailaddress,trytypinginthecompanynamealong with the person’s name. •Filloutthetemplate

CREATING A TASK IN BASECAMP1. Go to the project in basecamp labeled “Incoming Dashboard Lead Queue.”

2. Click on “To-Do’s”

3. • Determinetheprioritylevelofthecustomerfromyourresearch(DependentonGooglepagerank) a. Page Rank •Page Rank 7/10-10/10: Priority 1 (Enterprise) •Page Rank 5/10-6/10: Priority 2 (P2) •Page Rank 4/10 or below: Priority 4 (Low Value Leads) •Page Rank Unknown: Priority 3 (Default)

Operations Process



d. Go to the comments of the item you just added, and copy/paste the information template. Once you fill in the information, make sure to subscribe Dennis Yu, Andy Dowsett, and Ralph King Mayola. Finally, click “Add Comment”.

NOTE: FOR PRIORITY 1 CLIENTS ONLY, ALSO TYPE IN “DENNIS, PLEASE RESPOND HERE.” STOP HERE AS DENNIS WILL HANDLE ALL COMMUNICATION FROM THIS POINT ON.

Operations Process



b. Dependent on their priority, scroll to whatever list they are in (Enterprise, P2, Low Value Leads, or Default) and click “Add an Item”.

c. Type in “P” followed by the number of which priority they are, and then the email address. Then assign to Andy Dowsett, and make it due in the number of days the list suggests.

Operations Process



First Responses to Customers

NOTE THAT MESSAGES IN RED SHOULD BE CHANGED ACCORDINGLY.

*Key is personalization and attention to detail

• Subject Line: Your page has 3,204 fans with 56% engagement!• CC: [email protected]• If there is information about them, create a personalized email targeting what they do, and what they are

good at. Examples below: Personalization is in red – change accordingly.

• If there is no clear information about the lead, use this default mailing template. (Follow EXACT format). Subject line: Your Blitzmetrics Dashboard!

Hello Mohit,

Thanks for reaching out!

We love what you are doing with web analytics and communications at Leo Burnett and want to help you out with your presence on social media.

Which pages would you like to monitor on your dashboard?We include Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube data for you, plus three of your competitor’s pages.

Let me know and we'll get going on your dashboard!

Hello (insert name),

Thanks for reaching out!We couldn't tell much from your email address but we would love to help you out with your presence in social media!


Let me know and we'll get going on your Blitzmetrics dashboard!

Hello Lucas,

Thanks for reaching out!

We love what you’re doing with social media strategy and consulting at Fifty and Five and want to help you out with your presence on social media!


Let me know and we'll get going on your dashboard!

Operations Process



Following Up

*Only follow up if no response within the given number of days set in Basecamp.

• Subject Line: Avi, still interested in a Blitzmetrics dashboard?• CC: Dennis Yu

• Always track that you followed up in the comments on the item in Basecamp.

I was just following up with a dashboard request you sent us.

We love your idea of bringing the Jewish community together on a global scale and want to help you spread your word through social media!

To get started - Just let me know which pages you would like to monitor on your dashboard.We include Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube data for you, plus three of your competitor’s pages.

Let me know so we can get going on your dashboard!

Operations Process



Some good rules on choosing a communication method wisely:

• If a client or partner is new, use the phone or do it in person. You are building the relationship, plus clients expect a higher level of “service”. This also gives us a safety valve in case they are not happy.

• If a client doesn’t respond well to email, use the phone. Learn a client’s preferred communication styles, including their favored time of day. If you’re not sure, ask them directly.

• If it’s internal, then use email or Basecamp by default. The exception is when you need an immediate response of when back-and-forth interaction in needed. We hold ourselves to a higher standard. Clients pay us so they don’t have to keep track or be responsible. In other words, they are paying us to show initiative. We cannot send them an email and then blame them when they don’t respond. But internally, we cannot just ignore notes, since we are the ones who are supposed to be proactive.

• If it’s client communication, lean towards Basecamp vs email, so we have a clear record that can be shared by others.

Use the RACI model when deciding: This prevents project role confusion and streamlines who needs to see what and when.

8.3 Communicating With Clients

Operations Process



When you look at their page and see a small fan base or low engagement, you can mention this in your analysis. And when they ask about what we can do for them ad-wise, analysts — check out this sample reply:

Subject line: Steve, Extreme Bucket List is awesome!

You have 18k fans and some decent engagement so far. And we recommend that you need to do these things: - Run ads to promote your messages, which aren't reaching fans. - Run targeted ads to grow the fan base. - Collect emails from your fb page, like what you're doing on the site. - Measure the hell out of the social ROI, primary via multi-channel attribution. Of course, you'd set up remarketing pixels on fb and the site, if you haven't already. We can do any one of these items at $500 a month for our fee with actual ad spend on your account (or the account we set up in your name with your credit card). But all this is based on what your goals are — audience growth ,engagement, email collection, conversion, etc..., as well as budget/ ROI considerations.

What do you think? Happy to discuss on the phone. Best, Dennis

Note that we can break down any package into a set of tasks — create dashboard, run fb sponsored stories, implement landing page to collect email, analyze google analytics, create ad report, set up basecamp project with tasks, etc.

8.4 Most folks who ask for dashboards really need ads



The custom dollar sticker is a sticker that resembles the face on a real American dollar. However, instead of a president’s face, we are using the faces of real people – people that are either current clients or ones we are trying to acquire. We create these stickers, and then put them on real money to mail to the client/prospect.

8.5 Custom Dollar Sticker

ASSIGNMENT:When a dollar sticker needs to be created, your project manager will assign a “to-do” to you in basecamp. An email will automatically be sent to you notifying you of this task. (An example “to-do” would be: Create dollar sticker for Dennis Yu)

SLA (SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT): 20min – 1 hour (depending on how long it takes to find a good quality photo)

HOW TO CREATE THE ARTWORK FOR THE DOLLAR STICKER:Download the dollar sticker template (a psd file) HERE

Artwork Size: width 1.457" x height 1.847"

1. Find a photo of the person the sticker is for (search their name on Linkedin.com and Facebook.com to find a good photo). Make sure it’s a good quality photo where you will be able to crop the person's face.

2. Save the photo to your computer then open it in Photoshop.3. Change the resolution to 300 pixels/inch (go to “Image”, then “Image Size”, then change the Resolution)4. Select the rectangle marquee tool and select the person’s face. Then click “cut”.5. Open the sticker Photoshop template (that you downloaded from the link above)6. Click “Paste” to paste the person’s face in the Photoshop file.7. Move the photo behind the other layers and increase or decrease the photo to the desired size.8. To crop the picture, select the Elliptical Marquee Tool and drag to the shape of the sticker (make sure you

are on the correct layer).9. Go to “Select”, then “Inverse”, then “Edit”, then “Cut”.10. Change the color of the picture by first going to “Image”, then “Adjustments”, then “Hue/Saturation”.

Move the Saturation slider to -100. Click “ok”.

Operations Process

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xvq536rcns3xga9/jY0CG1ZCGT/Dollar%20Sticker%20Template



11. Then go to “Image”, then “Adjustments”, then “Color Balance”. Use the sliders to adjust the color to match the dollar template color.

12. Lastly, update the person’s name.

SAVING AND POSTING THE FILE1. Save the file as a .psd file AND a .png file2. Name the file with the person’s FIRST and LAST name, then DOLLAR, then the version number. (Example:

DennisYu_dollar_V1)3. Post both the .psd file and the .png file in Basecamp under the to-do that was assigned to you. Your

manager will get a email notification saying that you posted the file.

Expected Turnaround Time: 1 Business Day

Operations Process



The shredded currency is used for marketing purposes. We hand out 1 ounce bags to potential clients and also throw them out into the crowd at marketing conferences. The artwork is very similar to the Dollar Stickers, but slightly a difference size.

8.6 Shredded Currency

ASSIGNMENT:When artwork for a bag of shredded currency needs to be created, your project manager will assign a “to-do” to you in basecamp. An email will automatically be sent to you notifying you of this task. (An example “to-do” would be: Create shredded currency artwork for Dennis Yu)

SLA (SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT): 10min – 1 hour (depending on how long it takes to find a good quality photo)Note: If you just created a custom dollar sticker, the artwork should be the same except for the size of the document.

HOW TO CREATE THE ARTWORK FOR THE SHREDDED CURRENCY:Download the shredded currency template (a psd file) HERE

Artwork Size: width 1" x height 1"

1. Find a photo of the person the sticker is for (search their name on Linkedin.com and Facebook.com to find a good photo). Make sure it’s a good quality photo where you will be able to crop the person's face.

2. Save the photo to your computer then open it in Photoshop.3. Change the resolution to 300 pixels/inch (go to “Image”, then “Image Size”, then change the Resolution)4. Select the rectangle marquee tool and select the person’s face. Then click “cut”.5. Open the sticker Photoshop template (that you downloaded from the link above)6. Click “Paste” to paste the person’s face in the Photoshop file.7. Move the photo behind the other layers and increase or decrease the photo to the desired size.8. To crop the picture, select the Elliptical Marquee Tool and drag to the shape of the sticker (make sure you

are on the correct layer).9. Go to “Select”, then “Inverse”, then “Edit”, then “Cut”.

Operations Process

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/yw4fthye611zk2k/YpYXH7pmON



10. Change the color of the picture by first going to “Image”, then “Adjustments”, then “Hue/Saturation”. Move the Saturation slider to -100. Click “ok”.

11. Then go to “Image”, then “Adjustments”, then “Color Balance”. Use the sliders to adjust the color to match the dollar template color.

12. Lastly, update the person’s name.

SAVING AND POSTING THE FILE1. Save the file as a .psd file AND a .png file2. Name the file with the person’s FIRST and LAST name, then DOLLAR, then the version number. (Example:

DennisYu_dollar_V1)3. Post both the .psd file and the .png file in Basecamp under the to-do that was assigned to you. Your

manager will get a email notification saying that you posted the file.


Operations Process



Ads drive traffic. Together with our application, they are designed to work seamlessly together in driving fans, engagement, leads, or conversions of any type.

The important thing to know when creating ads is that they need to “templatable”. This means that they need to be designed in a way that allows us to reuse them. Images and ad copy should be able to be replaced easily without having to redesign the entire ad. Our system allows us to drop in different text and images so keep this in mind when designing.

8.7 Ad Creation

ASSIGNMENT:Your manager will post a to-do assignment to you in Basecamp with instructions on who the ads are for and where to find information about them, the dimensions of the ad and how many ads to create.Please note that this is a process. Your manager will ask you to make many slight changes to the ads before finally approving them.

SLA (SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT): 30min – 1hr per iteration (Iteration means draft).

WHEN DESIGNING AN AD

1. Create it in either Photoshop or Illustrator so we can edit the .eps file if needed.2. Save the ad as a .png file for posting in Basecamp.3. Save the ad with the Client Name, then AD, then the version number. (EXAMPLE: Reputation.com_Ad_Dentist_V8) * IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO KEEP THE VERSION NUMBERS ACCURATE SINCE THERE WILL BE MANY DRAFTS OF THE SAME AD.4. Post the drafts in Basecamp. Your manager will give you feedback then ask for specific changes. You will

most likely go back and forth until the manager confirms that the ad is good to go. * PLEASE NOTE THAT QUICK TURNAROUND ON ITERATIONS IS NECESSARY AND VERY IMPORTANT.

Expected Turnaround Time: Within 3 hours of each manager comment. There will be many quick changes needed and the sooner the changes can be made, the quicker the process moves to completion.

Operations Process



Blitz builds custom “dashboards” for clients. A dashboard is the place where clients see all of their analytics. A “skin” is the way a dashboard looks. For marketing purposes, we like to dress up the “skin” so that they are specific to the client we are targeting. Therefore, we insert the client’s logo and update the main colors to match the client’s brand.

8.8 Creating a Dashboard

ASSIGNMENT:Your manager will post a to-do in Basecamp to you that will have specific information about the client. Then, find and update the client’s logo so that it fits the dimensions of the dashboard skin AND update the dashboard skin CSS file to match the client’s brand colors.

SLA (SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT): 30min – 1hr

ONLINE VIDEO TUTORIAL LINK: http://www.fearthemongoose.com/readytalk/How%20to%20make%20a%20dashboard/lib/playback.html

DASHBOARD CREATION URL: blitzmetrics.com/dashboard/create/enterprise/

Directions: 1. Go to the dashboard creation url (blitzmetrics.com/dashboard/create/enterprise/)2. Name the account and put it in the correct "This is an" folder3. Click "start"4. Next, click "add a new entity to group" under pages5. Add the client's facebook page, then click "add pages"6. Close the "add some facebook pages" window7. Click the page you just created, and go to "edit"8. Add a Twitter account and YouTube account9. Close the "edit" box10. Next, add competitors by clicking "add portfolio"11. Name the portfolio with the competitor name12. Change hte "what type of portfolio is this?" to "competitor's portfolio"13. Close the window14. Add a page to the competitor by clicking

http://www.fearthemongoose.com/readytalk/How%20to%20make%20a%20dashboard/lib/playback.html

blitzmetrics.com/dashboard/create/enterprise/



Blitz builds custom “dashboards” for clients. A dashboard is the place where clients see all of their analytics. A “skin” is the way a dashboard looks. For marketing purposes, we like to dress up the “skin” so that they are specific to the client we are targeting. Therefore, we insert the client’s logo and update the main colors to match the client’s brand.

8.9 Custom Dashboard Skins



Download dashboard skin files HERE:

WHEN DESIGNING A DASHBOARD SKIN – 2 PARTS

PART 1: FIND, UPDATE AND SAVE THE LOGO

Example:

Directions: 1. Find the client’s logo online2. Resize the logo so it is 50 pixels high. The width will be proportional to the highth.3. Save the logo as a .png file with a transparent background. 4. Save the file with the business name first, then LOGO (Example: zenzi-logo).

Operations Process

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xvq536rcns3xga9/uzTU9FyUiZ/Example%20Dashboard%20Skin.zip



Part 2: Update and Save the CSS FileExample:

Directions: 1. Open the CSS file (called “style”) that you downloaded from the link above.2. Resave the css file with the client’s name, then STYLE, then the version number. (Example: Zenzi_style_V1)3. Update the colors of the dashboard to match the client’s color scheme. •LINESTOBEUPDATED: •Line25(#headerh1color) •AlltheRGBhexcolorsthatmatchLine33–therearetwodifferentcolors(Note:Doafind and replace to replace the old hex color with the new one). •Line79(#hd-wrapperh3background)

Once finished – post all files in Basecamp which will notify your manager.


Operations Process



To follow these instructions, you must have access to the SQL database and be able to upload files to the codebase and have them approved. Kevin Wallace should be able to set you up with this.

8.10 Custom Skin Implementation

ASSIGNMENT:Implement the custom skin.


Directions: 1. Name the file as the name of the partner. For partner NewSkin, call it "newskin.css".

2. Name the logo file "newskin-logo.png"

3. Update line thirteen of the CSS file, making the background image reference the logo filename and its eventual location: "background: url(images/newskin.logo.png) 0px 3px no-repeat !important;"

4. Update line 21 of the CSS file. Take the width of the logo and subtract 195, using the resulting number (positive or negative) as the "left:" value.

5. Upload the CSS file to the partners/ folder, and the logo file to partners/images/ folder

6. In the mySQL database client, run the query "select * from socialstats.partners"



7. Above the results, click "create new row", then Input the name (without file extension) of the CSS file, followed by the name of the skin as you would like it to appear in the partner dropdown ("NewSkin"). Unless otherwise known, enter all remaining information identically to other entries where "defaultcountry" is "US".

8. Click "Apply".

9. Go to: https://blitzmetrics.com/dashboard/create/enterprise/ and select either create new dashboard or edit existing dashboard, whichever applies.

10. Click the "Edit Settings" button and select the newly created partner name (e.g. "NewSkin") from the partner drop-down list.

11. Check the dashboard for appearance - you may need to adjust line 21 of the CSS file again so the title sits comfortably next to the logo.


https://blitzmetrics.com/dashboard/create/enterprise/



Testimonials are a powerful way to prove our worth and close sales with potential clients. This is the reason why we pack them onto our website and into our marketing materials. We have many happy clients; therefore it’s essential that we ask for testimonials to help us sell our services.

8.11 Compiling Testimonials


SLA (SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT): 15min

TESTIMONIAL DIRECTIONS:1. Via a Basecamp to-do task, your manager will provide you with the name and contact info of the person

to contact.2. Send an email directly to that person requesting a testimonial.

3. When you receive the testimonial back, post it in the following Basecamp thread (https://blitzmetrics.basecamphq.com/projects/4157786-process-template-contracts-proposals/posts/62403085/comments)

4. When posting, make sure to post the following: •Theperson’sname,jobtitleandcompany •Whattypeofbusinessitis(agency,local,non-profit) •Thetestimonial5. Your manager will be notified of the testimonial once you submit it to Basecamp.

Expected Turnaround Time: Within one week (depends on how quickly the client gets back to you). If no answer by the end of one week, post an update on your to-do assignment in Basecamp that stats when you contacted the person, then contact them again to follow up.

An example email:

Hi [insert name],My name is [your name] and I am a part of the Blitz team. I was just wondering if you would be willing to write a brief testimonial for us. The testimonial will be used in our marketing materials and on our website to showcase people like you who are finding success with Blitz.

An example testimonial post:

Christine Metzger, Owner at UpScale Plus & UpScale Princess Consignment A LOCAL business.

"In today's struggling economy, I was not sure if internet advertising would be effective for me, but Blitzlocal has been a real help in introducing my store to a younger audience with more disposable income. Their team concept meant every part of my campaign was handled by a specialist with attention to detail. specialist gave me instructions and direction to take me to the next level."

Operations Process

https://blitzmetrics.basecamphq.com/projects/4157786-process-template-contracts-proposals/posts/62403085/comments

https://blitzmetrics.basecamphq.com/projects/4157786-process-template-contracts-proposals/posts/62403085/comments



8.12 Setting Up a New Project

Follow the steps below to create a new project.

SLA (SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT): 5MIN

DIRECTIONS:1. On the main dashboard page, click “Create a new project”

2. On the “Create a project” page, name the project, then click “Create this project”.3. Go back to the main dashboard page by clicking the “dashboard” tab.4. Locate the project you just created and click to go to the Overview tab of that project.5. Click the “people & permissions” tab

6. Click "add people, remove people, and change permissions”7. Then "Add another company to this project"8. From the drop down arrow choose "Clients 1 - Platinum" (or whatever category is appropriate) and click

"Add Company". a. That should put it under the Clients 1 - Platinum category automatically. If not, then you have to go to "Project Settings" b. Go to the "Select a Primary Company for this project" drop down menu c. Select "Clients1-Platinum" and click save.


Operations Process



8.13 Setting Up a New Project Under a Partner Company

Follow the steps below to create a new project.


DIRECTIONS:1. On the main dashboard page, click “Create a new project”

2. On the “Create a project” page, name the project, then click "I'd like to give a client or another company access to this project too".

3. Use the dropdown menu to choose which company you want the project to live under.

4. Click "create this project".5. Verify that the project is there by using Ctrl+F to search for the project from the main Basecamp

dashboard screen.

Operations Process



8.14 Shutting Down a Project

Follow the steps below if you need to shut down/cancel a project.


DIRECTIONS:1. Find the project in question in Basecamp2. Add a comment indicating the reasons why the project is being closed, just for the record.3. Go to “Project Settings” in the upper right corner of the screen.

4. Under “Project Status: This project is…”, click “Archived”5. Click “Save Changes”

NOTE: There is more to closing a project than just removing it from Basecamp If there are any services that we need to transfer to the client. For example: if we are hosting a client, we must provide a client with a copy of their site so they can host it elsewhere. This needs to be done and documented before we close the project. Each project is different, and it should be the analyst managing the project who does this, since he/she is the person who knows what's going on.


Operations Process



The Secrets ofOnline Marketing



Small businesses spend money on marketing via yellow pages, coupons, direct mail, better signage, Internet advertising, radio and TV spots, newspapers, flyers, bake sales and many other varieties of marketing. But how should they allocate between each of these channels?

The answer is ROI, but rarely do they do that.

Calculating ROI is not easy. Some advertising is more measurable than others. The web is easiest, since we can track directly which potential customers saw the ad, clicked on it, what it cost, and whether those folks took action, filled out a form, picked up the phone, or walked into the office.

And the yellow pages? Pretty much dead.

Just ask, "How did you hear about us?" And of those folks, how many became customers? Let's say you're a dentist. Of the people who walked in the door last month, 30 of them mentioned that they found you through the yellow pages. Assuming they all became customers and you'd be willing to pay $100 to get a new customer, then the yellow pages drove $3,000 in value. If you're paying $2,500 per month, then you were clearly better off to advertise in the yellow pages.

But what if you only got 5 new customers? In that case, you've lost $2,000 per month on your yellow pages investment. Worse, you're locked into a 1 year contract, so you're going to multiply that loss by 12 and there's nothing you can do to adjust for it. It's a leaky faucet that you're only allowed to touch once per year, even if you know it's dripping, you have to wait a year to fix it, the next time the book is published.

With Internet marketing, you can see almost instantly what is working or not, and you can make immediate changes. Maybe as a dentist you find that folks who search on "root canal" are worth 5 times as much as those who search "teeth whitening". In that case, you can pay more for the latter and less for the former. Or maybe the majority of your customers live within a 15-mile radius of the office. Then you can set up the campaign to show ads only to people who live and work in that radius. And you can turn the dial to adjust as often as you like with no additional cost.

There's no risk to Internet advertising so long as you are able to measure your results and are also able to react quickly. At Blitz, our experts have already built successful campaigns for dentists, lawyers, mechanics, and small business owners of all types. Our system monitors your campaigns 24x7 to make sure they are producing for you. And when you have thousands of keywords spread across multiple search engines, it's probably not the best use of your time to do that.

1.1 What is Internet Marketing

INTRODUCTION



1. We’re Your Personal Internet Marketing Experts: You're not dealing with a call center or salesperson (who just hands off to operations). The person you deal with is your analyst, from start to end, a trained expert. No management overhead.

2. Performance-Based: We are not an agency; we spent your money like it's ours. We are fully transparent, so the reports you see are the same ones we see. No long-term contracts.

3. Simple: Easy to understand, you spend a dollar, you get $x in new clients. Now how we do that across multiple marketing channels is complex, but looking at results doesn't have to be.

1.2 Why Use Blitz?

All of that is from a marketing standpoint, but if you’re here to work for us you may be thinking about why you’re at Blitz instead of a different firm. We’ve strived to make ourselves different from others in many ways:

• Better Technology: Our optimization techniques are superior. Now while everyone will claim that, too, clients are in no position to judge, so it's not worth mentioning. Webvisible, ReachLocal, LocalLaunch, and the other players were started by salespeople who grew by hiring more bodies to sell and pack call centers. Then you need a bunch of management overhead to manage these people. If it works for a Lane Bryant, Dominos or other Blitz customers, it can work for their local business.

• Hidden Talent: We're tapping into a hidden workforce that is well educated and relatively inexpensive — stay at home moms and students. These folks are intelligent and hard-working, but don’t have the opportunity to prove it. The current economy and employment market doesn’t help them, either. Let’s empower the little guy to help the little guy.

• Fair Opportunity For Everyone: No management overhead, no fancy offices. Everyone must learn from the bottom to work their way up — even the CEO. Advance based on how hard you work and what you achieve.

• Independent: We are in control of this company and can shape it however we choose. I think we have the best people, too. Help us make this an awesome company.



The secret is that there is no secret. Try this out method just for a few days, and see how things change. Don't judge it at first, but just try it and see.

1. First things first: In the morning, before you open email, IM, or fire up the web browser, write down on physical paper a list of 3 things you want to get done today. Order it by importance and work the list in that order. Do not jump around. 2. Be realistic about what you can get done in one day. Being able to cross things off one at a time will feel great. Gmail has a task list now, but I prefer paper. Or use Basecamp, our project management system, by assigning yourself tasks. But get that first major task on your list done first. Then, and only then....

3. Open your email. For each email, read it only ONCE and either delete it, delegate it, or do it. Resist the urge to check email every few minutes, eagerly awaiting messages as if they are Christmas presents to open. Most people auto-interrupt themselves a hundred times a day, which eliminates the chance of having solid blocks of productive time, the only way to have depth of thought.

Don't sacrifice the urgent for the important. I also call it "blasting off", since as web folks, surfing is part of our job. But lose focus, and before you know it, two hours have gone by. Or maybe a whole day or even a week has passed, you feel like you've been working, but wonder why you don't have much to show for it.

4. Better to not have instant messenger open at all; you lose more time than you think because of context switching cost. This is a huge productivity killer, because you auto-interrupt yourself and others, destroying productivity for multiple people. It takes 20 minutes to get back to "cruising altitude", so any interruption puts you back on the runway for take-off again. 24 random, five minute chunks of time is not as good as a solid two hour block, any more than 9 women in one month can produce one baby. If you must have IM, then your status should be "busy at work, need to focus", and for folks you like to chat with all day, tell them you're trying to focus, but to catch you when you're free later. Turn on your IM once you have your critical 3 tasks done.

Thus, respect other people's time; know when you need to impose an interruption cost on them or whether they can answer at their convenience, when it's most productive for them. Understand that when you interrupt someone, you're taking him or her from cruising altitude and putting him or her smack back down on the runway again. We're not TV news reporters that have to have up-to-the- minute breaking news.

Ironically, when you get your pre-planned tasks done first, you'll be able to better absorb news, since you won't be trying to remember 10 things at the same time, while trying to consume more. Not having IM open is not the same as being unresponsive to team members, since fellow team members will ping you when your part is behind. Be on top of your work and you'll be pinged less often.

1.3 The Secret To Getting This Done



5. Don't play music, have the TV going, or other distractions. That works in jobs that don't require your full brainpower, but nothing we have is shallow in that way. If you want to listen to music, listen intently 100%. If you try to do two things at the same time, you're neither very well. Unlike a computer, which can have quad-core CPUs, the human mind has one CPU and can only do one thing at a time. If you're talking to a co-worker, do not try to read your mail at the same time. Not only are you not paying attention, but you’re also being disrespectful of his or her time.

6. Put yourself in an environment that is like an office, ideally, you have a room that has a door you can close. Maybe even consider renting office space cheap nearby later. Kids, pets, the TV and other distractions can cause you to eat a whole day without realizing it. Work first, then play. If you go play before you get your work done, your mind's guilt complex will kick in, not allowing you to truly enjoy that time. Come to the office, if you’re in Portland. You’ll learn more.

7. Check your mail only two other times in a day, perhaps at lunch and at night. Resist the urge to refresh the mail and auto-distract yourself. When you have a new task, put it into Basecamp immediately. To do it later is to create twice the work, plus increase the chance you will forget. Being behind will cause a pile-up. Not only does it take you longer to get the actual work done (since so much time has passed), but you have to deal with the damage to the client and rest of the project, and then get further behind on new projects coming in. If you catch yourself continually in excuse-making mode, odds are that you're here. Watch this video: http://inboxzero.com/video/

The compound effect is that you may be spending more time being defensive, cooking up excuses and blaming others, than actually working. This delays you further and requires even more excuse production, putting you into a negative spiral. You don't want to be here. The first thing to do when you realize that you're in a hole is to stop digging.

5. Evaluate: At the end of the day, see if you got those original tasks done, then send a status report, including items that were assigned - but not on the list for today or on the list, but not done. Clearly things change, clients change their minds, we have fire drills, or something comes up. Be honest with yourself and you can experience massive productivity. In just a few hours of being at "cruising altitude", you can focus, getting more done than in a whole week of random interruptions. It's an incredible feeling to know you're on top of your game, where co-workers and clients respect you, where everything is under control, and where you have plenty of time to play, too. You can use this momentum to build a positive feedback spiral.

While you may make adjustments to this to suit your personality and work style, some fundamental things are true — work on the important things first, be aware of interruptions (especially "context switching"), do one thing at a time, and keep one list of your tasks. You don't need a sophisticated time-tracking system, just an understanding that you need to carve out large blocks time for the important things.

Many managers talk about "prioritization" or "working smarter, not harder" as a superficial way to ask teammates to get more work done. But understand the mechanics of productivity and you can be not just 20% or 50% more productive, but an order of magnitude.

http://inboxzero.com/video/



The secret to winning: Know the score of the game before you start! In other words, if the client has a strong competitive differentiation, has a product/service that you are enthusiastic about (which means you really understand, too), has limited competition, is poorly optimized, and has a great relationship with you, then you can't help but win!

• Competitive Differentiation: If there are hundreds of folks selling the same thing, how are you going to stand out? Plus, there will so much competition for traffic that you can risk blowing your budget in an area that is already highly optimized by existing players.

• You Like The Product/Service: Effective ad copy comes from being a true believer and user. Understand the pain points of your customer's customer, what problem they are trying to solve or what underlying desires are being satisfied. Go beyond the client to the needs of their customer, get in their head. Understand the lingo, read the blogs, talk to their customers. And if you like what they sell, odds are that they fill an unmet need in the market. Don't talk to them about technical trivia related to AdWords, that is your job, and they don't care. They are to help you with what they know best, their business.

•Limited Competition: Choosing a national or global client is difficult, you've widened the playing field. Software, affiliate offers, and product-based sales are complicated. Affiliate folks sell insurance, financial, downloadable products, and physical goods. The only way to win in the affiliate space is to pick a tight niche, and the odds of you being able to do this with a $200 total budget is almost nil. Product-based sales require messing with a shopping cart and potential offline conversion, too hard. We take on:

•Poorly Optimized: Nothing like finding a Ferrari with a flat tire, fixing it, and then being able to declare victory. Most clients are passionate about what they do, but know very little about marketing. The worse they are at marketing, the better you look. Why take on a business that is already well-optimized? You're looking to demonstrate a night-and-day improvement.

•Great Client Relationship: If they're not national or product-based, then they're probably a local professional services business. The client MUST participate in your marketing campaigns. They will tell you what prospects are saying, what's hot in the market, what tactics seem to be converting for them and competitors, and will make it a fun experience for your team. Make sure before starting that they are willing to set aside time, rather than be so busy that you are alone. Don't let "free" services be confused with "low quality", "cheap", or "inferior". You are a marketing professional. They should treat you as if they were a paying client who has hired an agency to work on their Internet marketing.

Clients who view this as free advertising will often not respond to deadlines or give you what you need, putting you in a bad spot. Manage that relationship carefully, one person on your team must have that primary responsibility, else nobody will. And you need to work with the owner. That may be daunting, as a college student and untrained professional, but this person understands ROI more than anyone in the company and has the incentive to do something about it.

1.4 The Secret To Winning



I want to talk about how saying no to the wrong clients is more important than saying yes to the right clients.

Blitz is about serving local service professionals, the folks you find in the yellow pages and have professional certifications. The only exceptions we make to that are folks who can pay us $10k a month or rare pro-bono (free) projects that have significant strategic value to the company. The promise that they'll tell their friends about us is not something you want to bank on. The "friends and family" discount is also a pitfall.

That said, should we ignore folks who aren't our target market? While we can't take them on as clients, we can at least refer them to our Learning Center. They're too cheap to afford us anyway, so might as well let them benefit from some of our articles and tools. That way they can get the help they need, and we don’t mind giving them access to self-serve items. And you never know — maybe once they see what they’d have to do themselves, they’ll want us to do it!

1.5 Self-Service For Blitz Users



2.1 What Is Real And What is Snake Oil

We've poked fun at SEO consultants for pulling the wool over their client's eyes. And we've noted that what's real about SEO is content and links — writing stuff that real humans would appreciate, and making it so good that people will link to it.

As Matt Cutts (the Google spam fighter and voice of Google to webmasters) says —l ong-lasting value comes from focusing on what users want, as opposed to worrying about every minor search engines algorithm tweak. True, you can find a "trick" that may work temporarily — but the risk is that it doesn't last, you get caught, or both. Spammers, who make money by deceit — as opposed to creating useful applications with useful content, will crank out thousands of sites with thousands of pages, all interlinked. As their sites "crash and burn", they have to keep making more of them. That's called "black hat" and is the realm on one-man shows that have nothing to lose, not sustainable, reputable businesses like ours.

Most items that consultants brand as SEO are really a combination of common sense and good webmastering. This includes:

•Usability: Having your contact information prominent on every page, writing page titles that make sense (usually by including your keyword), navigation that follows the "golden triangle."

•Site Performance: Making sure your site loads fast by shrinking down images, getting rid of certain flash elements, and tuning the application code.

•Content: Growing your site to at least 10 pages. Then growing it to 50 pages. Then growing it to 100 pages. Ok, you get the idea… Have lots of informative content that is well written and well structured.

•Marketing: Buy clicks from search engines, list yourself in directories that are popular and have the audience you want to attract. Ask colleagues and business partners to link to your pages, because you both have information helpful to a common user base.

See how that's just common sense repackaged as some highly technical stuff, against which you can bill outrageous amounts? I'm not saying that all SEO is snake oil — just that the vast majority of folks peddling SEO are snake oil salesmen (In another conversation, we'll go into SEO from the search engine's perspective, and how we can "reverse engineer" certain items.) Clients don't know any better, so these folks get away with it. It's not that clients are idiots — they know a lot about their area of expertise, and understandably, not much about SEO.

SECTION 2 - SEO FOR BEGINNERS



So how do you spot a charlatan?

They Like to Throw a Lot of Numbers At You: Easiest ticket to being an SEO is to subscribe to one of the many tools out there, type in the client url to run a report, then copy/paste that report as your own. Assemble a 20-page document with these reports and have it nicely bound at Kinko's (don't laugh, we've seen this elsewhere and even on our own team). You don't know what those numbers mean, nor do you need to. Nor does your client know or even care. In fact, you don't even know what SEO is, except to use these tools and self-proclaim your mastery. When you come across someone who likes to shove reports at you, ask them the "so what" question — to gauge if they have any inkling about the client's business and how this impacts traffic and sales. Traffic and sales are the numbers that count, by the way — not keyword densities and internal link percentages.

They Don't Know How to Program: Just because you've watched George Clooney in ER doesn't give you the right to operate on a live human being. Some folks will disagree with me here. However, I'll say this — if you're going to tell an engineer how to write better code, you better know something about coding yourself. And if your advice falls into one of the above categories of things that aren't really SEO, then call yourself a marketing consultant — as you are undistinguished from the other peddlers who pretend to help, but really just harm a client with technical nonsense, whether knowingly or not.

They Don't Understand the Client's Business: If you're helping a securities attorney, maker of horse nutritional supplements, or MySpace toolbar provider with marketing their services, you had better understand what they do at more than a cursory level. Even though we're responsible for only the on-line marketing, the test of whether your knowledge is sufficient is whether you could close one of their customers for them in a face-to-face meeting. Similarly, you should be so comfortable with their jargon that you can write a white paper or article about the client's practices — with clarity and authority. And how is that any different than optimizing the content that lives on their site? It's not.

You Don't Understand What They're Saying: If you don't understand this SEO consultant, odds are that he's not actually saying anything. The hallmark of authority is simplicity. People who know their stuff can explain it so clearly as to have it seem almost obvious. People who don't know their stuff will mask it with all kinds of complicated sounding language and acronyms — they puff their chests out, yet are afraid of being exposed. Pulling out the "proprietary" card is a sure sign that you're onto them. Too many TLA (Three Letter Acronyms) is another telltale sign.

So there it is. Did you see anything there that reminded you of a situation that you've been in? Perhaps you have found yourself being guilty of one of the points above, but didn't realize it at the time?

The mission of Blitz is little guys helping the little guy win. Examine yourself thoroughly to make sure you're actually helping the client grow their business — they trust you. Getting the sale is easy and will continue to be for the next few years in this nascent market. What's hard is delivering results — not just rankings, inbound links, and indexed pages — but actual traffic and sales.

An effective SEO is a businessperson — they can level with the client to diagnose and implement a plan that will provide ROI (Return on Investment). Clients don't know how much effort is appropriate to be successful online, nor where to apply that effort. A results-focused SEO (yes, an SEO is now a person, just like an MBA) understands that a dollar of client billing better result in 5 to 10 dollars of measurable revenue back to the client.



2.2 How To Do An Analysis - SEO in 12 Easy Steps

This process can be semi-automated. The part that can't is:

•Seeinghowthesiteworksfromausabilitystandpoint. •WhattheUSP(uniquesellingproposition)is,howthey'redifferent. •Understandinghowthetrafficshouldconvertand/ormonetize.

Put together the SEO bits with that understanding and you're golden.

Run through these 12 easy steps before or while talking to a client. As you become proficient, you should be able to do this on the fly with a client, giving them an eye-opening experience into what search engines see, as opposed to what people see.

1. Check For Canonical Domain Issue: Do the www and non-www version of the homepage go to the same url? If not, then look at www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/ for an understanding of how duplicate content should resolve to a single page. If it’s a php site, then mod_rewrite. If asp, then isapi_rewrite. If you’re giving a SEO presentation, talk about permanent (say 301 to sound fancy) redirects. We need server access to fix this.

2. Dynamic Looking URLs: Closely related to the above issue on url rewrite, the site should not pass parameters in the url. For example: mysite.com/?page_id=34&section=2&session_id=123abc is no good. Question marks and equal signs in the url mean that parameters are being passed. Instead, the url should look like mysite.com/large_blue_widgets — that is more descriptive from a user standpoint, plus helps robots index more easily. That is a static looking url, but could be dynamically generated. 3. Look For Text Versus Images/Flash Across Site: Do a control-A (select all) on the homepage. Is it just a gigantic image or a big flash video? Search engines cannot read images or flash — they need text. Is it navigation images, instead of text? How much text is on the homepage — at least a few sentences about what the business does? When you right click on images and see properties, is the alt-text blank, instead of filled with a few good keywords? Is the phone number in text and large in the upper corner? Are the links in flash or javascirpt, instead of CSS?

4. Unique Page Titles: Starting from the homepage, do they have page titles that are just a few words long (65 characters or less, if possible) and begin with their most important terms? The important terms are what we deem to be both relevant and high search volume. Do not start the page title with the name of the site unless it’s a strong brand. Make sure each page title is reflective of what that particular page is about. 5) Sitemaps: There should be a link to “sitemap” on the home page — and that sitemap should have links with anchor text (the words highlighted in bold) that are key search terms. For example, “our products” is terrible, while “peoplesoft testing software” is relevant. You should also be able to grab mydomain.com/sitemap.xml. See more at http://www.sitemaps.org/, where you can learn to use Google Webmaster Central to tell Google what pages you want crawled, plus check for errors.

6) Run SEO Reports: Put in the client’s url at seomoz.com/page-strength. This site gives you a couple dozen SEO metrics, which you can paste into a report and highlight as red (bad) and green (good). See many decks created by Josh for great examples of how this is done. Dean is creating our own version of this tool.



7. Run PPC Competitor Reports: Go to Spyfu.com and do a few searches. Put in a few keywords that you think are important to the site, plus the site url itself. If you’re looking at a keyword, it will come back with who is buying it on PPC, what it costs, how many clicks are available, and what terms are related. If you’re looking at a url, it will tell you what terms (if any) they are buying on Google, what terms they rank naturally on, and who are related competitors. Remember that is just Google — this company specializes in writing scrapers, which are robots that repeat millions of search results to see who comes up. 8. Source Code: Do a view page source from your browser, starting from the home page. Do a find (control F) for H1 and see if any come up. If so, are they using keywords that they want folks to find them on? H1 tags carry more weight than regular text, but are not as strong as the page title. Do you see frames on the site (look for “frame”) — perhaps 1 out of 15 sites you see will be just one page with the rest of the content inside a frame. Thus, search engines see only 1 page. At the top of the page, do you see a meta description with good keywords woven into a sentence? The meta description should mimic ad copy you’d have in AdWords. 9. Analytics Code: While still on that view of the code (mentioned in step 7), find instances of “Google”, “analytics”, or “urchin”. You may also see examples of other tracking software, too, towards the bottom of the body. The majority of sites will have Google Analytics installed — if they are small businesses, then we recommend that as a cheap, effective solution. Large sites may include Omniture SiteCatalyst, ClickTracks, or WebSideStory — easy enough to see.

10. Validation: Go to validator.w3.org and put in the url. Like the other tools, it will return usually a few dozen errors with explanations. Usually, you’ll see tons of missing attributes, which can mostly be ignored. If you want to scare the client, mention how many errors there are. Rarely will they put in our site (http://www.Blitz.com/ — make sure that you have the http and www part) and see that we’re hypocrites. 11. Seoquake.com: Another great Firefox browser plug-in to show you Google PR, pages indexed by Google, pages indexed by Yahoo, backlinks (how many sites link to you), age of site, and Alexa rank (popularity). As you browse sites, it’s handy to see these stats. Glaring problems are if there are less than a few dozen pages in the Google index, less than a few dozen backlinks, Google PR of n/a on many pages (especially bad if true on the homepage), and Alexa rank of greater than 500,000 (lower is better), which means almost no traffic. 12. Run SEOmoz Report: Go to seomoz.org/trifecta via our login and put in the prospect’s url. It will be back ranking factors and suggestions — it is perhaps the easiest and most powerful of the 12 steps here. The overall percentage score means little.



2.3 Doing a Solid Website Analysis

Writing an analysis can be tricky, especially if you have no experience in it. Overloading it with jargon and uncommon terminology is a common mistake, which confuses business owners.

Here's how to make a slide deck appeal to the business, instead of scaring them off with technical details that will cause them to have second thoughts:

1. After the title slide, first slide should be the Executive Summary, which presents an overall "business" view of their site. Maybe something like this:

"VirtualIron.com provides great information to IT personnel looking for server virtualization software, the layout is clean, there are clear calls to action (free trial, video, read testimonials), there is a fair amount of data (312 pages). However, the site gets hardly any traffic, with an Alexa rating of 329k (lower is better) and not having enough to even show up in third party monitoring tools such as quantcast.com. What is the sound of one tree falling in the forest if nobody is around to watch? The same sound that IT professionals make when you're not there on the forums they frequent or the search results that show pages from Citrix and VMWare.

This analysis covers how to increase traffic to the site via SEO (getting ranked on terms that matter), PPC (buying keyword traffic from the search engines), and also improve conversion rates (landing pages that convert and navigation changes that help users find what they're looking for. The demographic of people looking for your software, based on traffic from competitors is 72% male, primarily 18-49, overindexed to be Asian, and frequenters of IT and technology forums. We can meet them where they are, plus copy what we see working with competitors. We are proud to present several options for your review, all of which are performance-based, designed to drive measurable traffic and leads."

Notice how this type of analysis is missing from the current deck, which has a series of technical observations, but doesn't provide context or answer the question of "so what?", nor does it reflect an understanding of what their business is about. It's as if a machine went to their website and blindly went through a checklist of items. In a few months from now, we'll have automated tools to do this. But in the meantime, the true value of the analyst is to demonstrate we understand the specifics of their business, what prospective clients are looking for, and how we can credibly deliver upon our traffic promises. This is a far cry from what other agencies do, which is cut and paste the client name into a proposal template.



2. Executive Summary (Rename to "What's Working and What Needs Improvement")One column for each. SEO and SEM are almost synonymous, so it's just easier to talk about what's "good" and "bad", but with clients, you don't say "bad". You say it's an "opportunity for improvement", there are never problems, only opportunities. That's marketing for you. Most importantly, you can't just list a series of technical shortcomings, you must provide context.

The "excellent sitemap", which is mentioned a few times, what makes it "excellent", is it a big deal? The site homepage with PR6, is that good or bad? To properly answer the "so what" question, you can write a couple sentences under each column, that puts things into a business context. For things that we recommend fixing, how important are they and relatively how much effort is it to fix? Imagine you went to a mechanic and he said that he needed to order a few parts, then gave you some part numbers. You'd want to understand if those are $3 parts or $3k parts and whether it's a big deal or not overall. Is the car not even drivable or are these just a few minor things? When we talk to clients, we are the mechanics.

3. Important Things Should Stand OutDon't be afraid to make key points bold, creatively use italics/coloring, or to use bullets. Business owners won't sit there and read every word, same is true for people who are using search engines. They scan for the highlights.

From a usability standpoint on VirtualIron.com, they could put the phone number nice and large on the upper right corner of every page. How about emphasizing the calls to actions with big red buttons? For videos, they could have the video box with the "play button" over the image, as opposed to a link to a video, make it easy for prospects to find what they want. And to practice what we preach, we have to make our key points stand out.



2.4 How To Write Great Articles To Generate Business For Your Clients

At some point, you’re going to write articles to promote your clients. The articles are meant to draw in business owners, to stimulate their interest in marketing themselves online, educate them about what is possible, and show how our company provides a simple, measurable, cost-effective solution.

Each article should stand on its own (with an attention getting headline and helpful tips), while also rolling up into a larger framework. Below, I've outlined what that structure looks like, showing how success on the Internet (measured by driving awareness and new clients) is based on a process that links together your Unique Selling Proposition, Marketing, and Customer Management. To not link these pieces together is to randomly shoot in the dark, sometimes you can get lucky.

A few pointers on how we'd like to see our business articles done:

•Attention Getting HeadlinesInstead of "Benefits of Internet marketing", why not "7 reasons why your small business should be marketing online" or "Are you getting the most from your Internet advertising?" Asking questions or providing a top N list will stimulate interest.

•Bullet Points With Bolded ItemsRather than 2 or 3 lengthy paragraphs, break it up into shorter sentences and a list of bulleted items in the body (like this email), making sure to bold key points. Business owners are short on time and usually scan articles for the highlights.

•Be Specific In Your ClaimsUse examples, quote sources, provide figures. Instead of saying "Another benefit of Internet marketing is that it lowers the costs of advertising", which I took from the first article, say, "The average cost per lead from Google advertising is $1.37 versus over $9 from the yellow pages, according to the Kelsey Group". Doing research before writing articles does take more time, so let's certainly compensate your writers for this.

•End With a Call To ActionAt the end of the article, ask readers to do something. They've read this far, so why not take the next step to contact Blitz or continue to read the next article in the series (see below for the structure).



•Write Specifically For The Audience of Small Business OwnersRather than writing to hit a word count or to SEO for keyword density, let's write articles that are so informative that small business owners will want to forward this to their colleagues. We are looking for more than filler content, so have your writer(s) go through their articles and cut out redundant text, as many sentences don't say anything. Again, we know this is a higher standard, so do charge us for that.

Rather than generically say that there are lots of places on the web to market yourself and that there are many ways to manage your email lists, be specific, give a couple links to more articles (written by us or other folks). This takes a bit of research up-front and cannot be faked. I do see an example of providing a helpful link in "Optimizing for Local Search", that is good.

• Demonstrate Subject Matter Expertise This may be the biggest issue. I recommend that you choose one writer (not the one that wrote this latest batch, but the one before), who can invest time to understand Internet marketing from the standpoint of local service businesses (dentists, therapists, plumbers, roofers, mechanics, etc...). That person should be looking at sites like http://www.locallytype.com/pages/submit.htm and http://sbinformation.about.com/cs/advertising/a/aa022303a.htm. We want articles that are at that level. The PureContent article on "Other Alternatives in Local Search" could get there with more effort, but ends abruptly, perhaps to meet a word count or other limit.

We'll pay for higher quality, so let us know how we can get there. The article on "Outsourcing Search Engine Optimization Services" is a good first attempt, given no research, but with a bit of research, you could include a few examples (perhaps some statistics thrown in) and write from a standpoint of credibility.

http://www.locallytype.com/pages/submit.htm

http://sbinformation.about.com/cs/advertising/a/aa022303a.htm

http://sbinformation.about.com/cs/advertising/a/aa022303a.htm



2.5 Blog Promotion

Rather than talking about why blogging is important, let's discuss how you as an analyst can promote your client's blog. Your client's site is built on the WordPress blogging framework. Just because you build it, they won't come, people have to find out. The options are directory listings, pinging services, social media, PPC, SEO, and email marketing.

Let's talk just about the first two items in this article:

1. Directory Listings We automatically list clients in several free and paid directories. Directories don't carry the weight they used to, so don't sign up for just any directory, even if free, many of them are just lead gen or spam sites that collect your personal information.

Depending on which package your client has selected, you will have to go out and manually write their directory listing. Yes, Google Maps and Yahoo! Local count as directories, they are the most important ones. You want to list your client in both generic and category or geographically specific directories. For example, a nationwide directory for cosmetic surgeons or a directory just for designers that are in Boulder, Colorado. For the business name, make sure to include your geo-modified terms. So instead of "Dr. Bob Smith", say "Dr. Bob Smith | Boulder Cosmetic Dentist". Consult your manager for a list of the right directories.

2. Pinging Services When your client writes a new post, WordPress automatically notifies other blog services of the new content. By default,WordPress uses pingomatic, though there are about 90 blog services (http:// webtrafficroi.com/2008/07/must-have-wordpress-ping-list/). Pingomatic should be sufficient, but it doesn't hurt to let the other guys know about the new content. Our system handles this automatically.

Overall, using common sense to guide you won't lead you astray. For example, in your directory submissions, you should use your keywords where possible, but not in an obscene, repetitive way. If you have 512 characters to describe your business, don't just write a 7 word description, take time to craft a unique description of how the client differentiates from the competition. Mention the various services they offer. Perhaps the biggest no-brainer is to write content that real users would enjoy and find helpful. Help your client do this. Many expect to have first page rankings when there is hardly any content on their site to attract either robots or humans. Search engine optimization is fundamentally content and links, write great content and people will link to you.

http://webtrafficroi.com/2008/07/must-have-wordpress-ping-list/



2.6 Helpful Analytics Tools

Why Local Advertising Companies are FailingBorrell Research released a report on the Economics of Search Marketing for firms catering to local —ReachLocal, Yodle, MarchEx, WebVisible, and others. Companies in this space churn up to 90% of their clients every 6 months, meaning that they lose clients as fast as they can gain them. The Kelsey Group confirmed this trend last year, citing the inability of these companies to deliver leads. Clients will stay on a few months in good faith, giving the lead gen company time to make the phone ring. At a certain point, pleas to allow the system more time to “optimize” and concessions not to leave break down.

Why are local search marketing companies failing?

•Low Media Spend: These firms allocate 25 to 30 cents of the client’s dollar on buying clicks, given the 15-20% sales commissions they must pay, plus a fat profit margin. MarchEx reports a 55% gross margin. Thus, how much is left to actually spend on Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and other sources? For obvious reasons, these firms will not tell you how much of your dollar is actually going towards spend versus commissions and profits.

•An Uneducated Client Base: “Get found on Google” is a great sales pitch and most small businesses know they have to do something about their web presence. However, how likely is the local dentist, cosmetic surgeon, roofer, or personal injury attorney going to ask “So what percent of spend are you allocating to my campaigns? And how exactly do you manage my paid and organic campaigns?” Managing a web presence themselves is daunting, so agencies play into that fear.

As a new analyst, you may be wondering how you will be monitoring your active campaigns. There are many tools out there that can provide statistics about web sites you are monitoring. Take some time to acquaint yourself with these helpful tools.

Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics)This is one of the tools Google provides you with to analyze your active campaigns. Google analytics will provide you with valuable data such as bounce rates and website traffic.

SEOmoz (www.seomoz.org) SEOmoz is a powerful set of tools to help analyze links, keywords and other aspects of websites. You can use these tools to grade overall website quality.

SpyFu (www.spyfu.com) SpyFu is a site used mainly for keyword analysis. See which keywords are associated with a specific site, and also see detailed statistics about a certain keyword.

WordTracker (www.wordtracker.com)WordTracker is used for keyword analysis. This site is great for keyword generation.

SEOQuake (www.seoquake.com) SEOQuake is a downloadable toolbar for use with Internet Explorer or FireFox.

www.google.com/analytics

www.seomoz.org

www.spyfu.com

www.wordtracker.com

www.seoquake.com



•The Need To Grow: Fueled by venture capital, these firms are forced to shoot for billion dollar exits. Venture capital looks for a 10-to-1 return on their money and an exit within several years. This often leads to imprudent growth, aggressive sales tactics, and “overheating” of the company’s engines. Yodle.com reports having 5,000 customers at the end of 2008, but is on track to hit 50,000 customers by the end of 2009.

•Lack of Technology: The game is about sales — hire more salespeople and sell more accounts, as opposed to cautious growth, hiring experienced search professionals who have hands-on search experience, and optimizing the process of delivering efficient and effective campaigns. To engineer a platform to build high quality paid search campaigns, create websites that organically rank on important keywords, and properly train up staff is a major undertaking. Canned search campaigns driving traffic to canned landing pages is not.

•A “Winner Take All” Mindset: Firms choose to “floor it” instead of taking time to work on the engine in the shop before going up to the starting line. They are counting on sidestepping the performance issue by mention of “proprietary” technology — enough to satisfy unwitting investors and customers. Behind the façade, many agencies have low wage staff offshore manually configuring search campaigns.

•A Shift to Transparency: Local search marketing firms should voluntarily adopt a code of ethics. These include:

•Transparency: Clients should have the right to inspect their PPC accounts to know what keywords are being purchased and at what price. Consider that the FDA requires food companies to disclosure how many calories and how much sugar their products have.

•Campaign Portability: Wireless mobile providers have been forced to allow customers to take their phone numbers to other carriers. The same should be true with search agencies. Should the client choose to leave their current provider, they should be able to take their campaigns with them. Current practice is to hold the client hostage — if the client leaves, they lose their campaigns as well as landing pages.

•Disclosure of Advertising Methods Employed: While the agency may be driving leads, the client’s own site has not being developing organic search power. All along, the traffic has been sent to a subdomain owned by the agency — not the client’s own site. Should clients leave, they are left with nothing. This dependency makes switching difficult.

•No Long Term Contracts: 12 month contracts are common, as agencies want to lock in the client in anticipation of their wanting to leave. Yellow page publishers have one year contracts because they print the book once per year — as this is not true in search, agencies should allow clients to leave if they are losing money with their current provider.

What will it take to fix the current environment?



•Sales Compensation Models: A common complaint among clients is that once they sign a contract, they never hear from the rep again. That rep is already on to the next prospect, ready to sell, sell, sell — hit the aggressive quota or be terminated. To our knowledge, no other company in the industry pays their people according to retention and client satisfaction. Agencies should agree to compensate staff based on client performance, else we face a repeat of the long distance telecom switching battles witnessed in the 1980’s.

•Guaranteed Service Levels: When a client logs a ticket, they should expect a timely response. For example, general inquiries should be answered within 72 hours. If their site is down, they should expect a response within 3 hours. Clients don’t know who to talk to when they aren’t getting leads — the agency’s outsourced call center agents in India are unaware of how to service the issue, while the overeager sales rep is nowhere to be found.

•Industry Certifications: In the wild west of local advertising, anyone can claim expertise. We recently met an agency claiming to be the only certified agency to do search in all of Asia — no such certifications exist. The closest to having standards in the industry are SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization) and Search Engine College. But these standards are not yet formed or widely adopted.

•Pay for Performance: As the client base becomes more educated, the current sales tactics will no longer fly. Over the last 5 years, the market has evolved from CPM (cost per thousand impressions) to CPC (cost per click) to CPA (cost per acquisition). New agencies will emerge that will charge based not on long-term contracts of fixed dollar amounts, but Cost Per Call. As a dentist, imagine being able to pay only for calls, as opposed to a fixed monthly advertising figure. This reduces the client’s risk — yet this model requires that the agency actually be able to perform instead of sell.

•Performance Reporting: As a corollary to the Cost Per Call model, clients will be able to log in to view exactly what the agency is doing with the campaigns — how their company is being marketed, what types of traffic is being purchased, what is being spent, and how many leads are coming. Current agencies seemingly show some of this reporting, but build their fees into the reported figures, so that clients are unaware of what is actually being spent on what keywords.

•Robust Service Offerings: Pay Per Clicks campaigns driving traffic to canned landing pages is the “quick fix” to show immediate results. However, the longer-term, more effective approach is to help the client rank organically in search results, as opposed to having to pay for every single inbound click. Ranking organically requires a comprehensive process to list the client in Google Local Business center and other directories, helping the client place content on their website that reflects their unique selling proposition, setting up email autoresponder campaigns (so that leads to the client’s site can be nurtured into paying customers), and systematic training of the client (so that they can easily manage the site from a non-technical standpoint. This robust service offering goes far beyond what current vendors are offering; yet will soon be offered in the marketplace at significantly lower cost than the PPC only players who have been first on the scene.

Where Is The Market Eventually Headed?



How will the financial model of local adapt over time?Firms can take a 50% margin until the market gets smart. Consider the current VC-funded, growth oriented approach of a composite company that we’ll call SuperLocal, Inc. They have 250 employees and 5,000 clients that spend $1,000 a month. Assuming that 150 of these 250 employees are in sales, each agent is able to manage 33 clients. That’s $400,000 in annual revenue per employee (33 clients that spend $12k per year, ignoring churn). If you assume that the firm allocates 50% of the client’s budget to actual spend, that’s $200,000 per gross margin per year per employee. However, the firm must also cover sales commissions at 15% ($60,000) and operations at 20% ($80,000), general overhead at 10% ($40,000) — leaving 5% as a profit margin.

This is a skinny profit margin, but is partially offset by scale and other efficiencies. Let’s examine each one in detail to see what the most efficient model could look like:

•Economies of Scale: The cost of operating a PPC platform should go down the more clients you have in the system, as you can allocate over a larger user base. We can assume that operations, which consists of software expense (internally engineered or licensed technology), client support, credit card processing charges, and product development is perhaps 60% variable and 40% fixed costs. Thus, economies of scale will lower operations from 20% to a threshold of 12% (60% multiplied by 20%) at high volume.

•Sales Expense: Eliminating high pressure sales tactics and having a greater reliance on word of mouth causes several cascading effects. The influx of ex Yellow Pages salespeople who are making $150k a year is helping current firms achieve their acquisition targets, but at high per sale expense and high churn. Assuming an industry average tenure of 5 months (50% of clients stay for 5 months) for SuperLocal, Inc., the revenue per client is 5 months multiplied by $1,000 — or $5,000. A 15% commission on that is $750. Should SuperLocal be able to actually deliver upon the product, it would seem quite feasible to double average lifetime value. Thus, you could pay the sales agent half the commission rate, while keeping their earnings the same. In fact, if you paid the agent based on retention and allowed them to interact beyond the initial sale, you would incent them to keep the client longer. Let’s assume that via product improvements, we can safely drop the commission to 10%.

•Platform Improvements: Even if we hold the percentage of spend constant at 50%, improvements in how campaigns are built, optimized, and automated should be able to squeeze out 50-70% percent improvements at the same budgets. This is based on our experience with clients that have come to us, having been unsatisfied with larger market players. The secondary effect of automation and efficiency improvements is that the average employee can handle more clients. SuperLocal employees should be able to handle triple the number of clients, given that they are not calling to complain as often, we are educating them on our processes, we are transparent in our reporting, and we set up alerts to notify them of performance improvements we’ve achieved. A 3x improvement may seem drastic until you consider what share of current client interaction stems from unhappy client calls.

The positive spiral effect of platform improvements is that the cost per sale decreases due to tenure improvements (clients stay longer), analyst coverage ratios (they can handle more clients), and automation of non-PPC functions not currently offered. Given higher performance, the company can now service clients who at $500 a month were previously not serviceable. Further, existing clients will spend more per month when they have greater ROI. Let’s assume that cuts operational expense in our model from 12% to 10% of gross spend.



•Greater Client Satisfaction: One unnoticed side effect is that clients are less likely to go out of business. The current players are putting small businesses out of business, as these firms are unknowingly putting their last dollar on the roulette wheel and hoping for the best. Cigarette companies face the same issue with potentially killing their customers when they overuse the product. But great client satisfaction will not only help clients stay in business in a tough economy, but encourage word of mouth effects. Amazon.com doesn’t do advertising — instead offering product marketing via free shipping. Local lead gen companies can eliminate sales expense altogether when the leads come in from happy clients. If you conservatively assume that half of SuperLocal’s clients could come through referrals, we cut sales expense from 10% to 5%.

The Resulting New Model Is Local Lead GenLet’s review what these implemented efficiencies do for SuperLocal and how it changes the model. Holding media spend constant at 50%, we cut sales expense to 5% and operations to 10%. Even holding overhead fixed at 10% — we allow SuperLocal to inflate executive salaries and buy a shiny office tower — the firm’s gross margin still grows to 25%.

Further, since client tenure (how many months they stay on average) has doubled, the revenue per client is $10,000. The existing sales staff of 150 can now handle 15,000 clients, which is a 3 fold improvement over the existing 5,000 — this is due to operational improvements and no longer losing customers as fast as we gain them.

The company now has an annual gross revenue of $180MM with only 250 employees, just about what ReachLocal has with 900 employees and just above MarchEx. We can even assume that as the company has expanded, they’ve been able to reach down to service lower price points, so let’s drop the average monthly spend to $750. And then assume that they increase percent of spend from 50% to 60% — effectively sharing back part of the efficiency with their client base. The gross revenue is reduced to $135MM and net margins fall to $20.25MM — still respectable. The decrease in price points with automation and efficiency improvements is something our team at Yahoo! predicted 4 years ago — since initially, an improvement in efficiency will decrease spend, as clients are getting the same number of leads for less money. And when advertisers are getting ROI, they then shift budgets into online channels after 3-5 months. Thus, spend follows a U-shaped curve when we implement efficiency improvements.

Finally, SuperLocal, Inc., has switched their pricing model to cost per call, based on a ratecard of geography and category. That has caused them not to gain share from competitors — there are no dominant players in local yet — but to grow awareness in the market, shed light on unethical business practices, and help force the bad actors out. And when that happens, local lead generation will become safe, transparent, and effective — and the overall market will be able to grow healthily.

Blitz believes in marketplace transparency:

•70centsofeverydollarwegetfromclientsisspentonbuyingtraffic.

•Thereportsclientsseearethesameoneswesee.

•Wehavenodirectsalesforcethatthenhandsofftoanoperationscallcenter—clientstalktoa trained analyst before and after the sale.

•Webelieveindrivingmeasurableperformance—callsyoucanseeandevenlistentorecordingsof.

•Wetreatyourmoneylikeit’sourmoney.

•We’vegrownourcompanywithourownmoney—notventurecapital—sowecangrowatthe proper pace and focus on the product, not sales growth.



3.1 Make Your Ads Better: Three Powerful Techniques

SECTION 3 - PPC FOR BEGINNERS

The majority of data analysts look for patterns after the fact, gathering information from large volume corporate campaigns and developing strategies in response to research. While the hunger for more rapid iteration is starting to trickle into many larger companies' web strategies, the lightning-iterative environment of paid search seems hectic and loosey-goosey by comparison. We are the proverbial street-smart Fat Tony (or Joey Metallica) by contrast with straight-laced Banker John who believes in data almost to a fault.

In the SEM field, a debate continues as to how much automation we should be using, and how much human interpretation is necessary. It's an important debate, because with all of that rapid iteration, the majority of human analysts are far worse performers than computers. But not all are. And computers are still notoriously poor at theory-building and inferences in complex environments… at least the computers that use the pea-shooter algorithms developed by lone developers or small teams at small software companies.

Recall that Google actually has amazing computing power and highly intelligent algorithms. In that environment a human analyst can leverage Google's power, for free, and do very well.

In that environment, we know that new campaigns are under the gun, facing a potential cold shoulder from Google's quality score algorithm. You must be relevant from the start, gain high CTR's on your ads (all else being equal) in the early going, or face higher costs and even a spiral of failure.



Three classic techniques can get you to better ad copy more quickly, without brute force testing of many variations. By "better," I mean higher CTR. We'll need to make Google happy in the early going to build up quality signals that will give you an account-wide benefit. Later, you can drill down more carefully on ROI related measures.

Dynamic Keyword Insertion In Title The first technique is fairly simple. Unless you know better from the beginning, try dynamic keyword insertion in title, but still try to pay attention to decent alternate text in cases where the matching won't work. Yes, I generally warn clients not to overuse dynamic keyword insertion because it ups CTR's too much without an ROI benefit in many cases. But to start, it's helpful to have it in your arsenal. The basic theory is we don't know what people are thinking yet, but we do know they'll click on a title that matches their query.

So, for a product offering archived, remastered football coverage (hypothetical example), you would use: {KeyWord:Football Classics in HD}

If someone types in "packers videos," the title would say "Packers Videos." At least you haven't hurt your chances. For body copy, plain and navigational beats flair and color most times. Ad text that says "Does Sterling Sharpe look better in HD?" will fail (even if the query was about Sterling Sharpe) compared with clear text that says something like "Free trial offer - classic NFL game archive in HD. Experience it now!" The latter explains the offer, doesn't try to be clever, and contains a call to action (Actually, twice, because mentioning a free trial is a quiet call to action.)

Use "skinny persona research" to govern your early ad copy choices. Or if that's even too much research - just do less of it, or … none at all, until you stop making ridiculous mistakes due to flawed research. Fat Tony doesn't have time for the in-depth research conducted by Banker John. But what he can do is use his head, and pay attention to 'lite' stats about his business all the time, as they emerge. An inexperienced attempt to relate to video gamers, for example, might try overly hard to relate to the "vernacular" of youth: a challenging and often unrewarding effort in the paid ads space. A ham-fisted attempt to squeeze demographic assumptions (or "research") into the tiny ad space might take the assumption that a certain game is targeted only to youth, primarily to Asian youth, or (let's say a video hockey game) primarily to male white kids who predominantly grew up in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.

It's definitely important to think about personas in writing your ads, and these might change from ad group to ad group. But the key is not to let persona thoughts override winning ad tone and tried-and-true navigational and psychological triggers. And when so many would-be creative writers actually insert wrong personas into ads, the maxim "less is more" applies in most cases to the targeting effort. Use a light touch here. You can't ignore what the market may be looking for, but don't make a mess of the targeting process.

For video gaming in general, your first thought might be "suburban kids." Your second thought might be, though — not only kids. Fat Tony knows that the average age of gamers is over 30. So, your market is basically gamers, and anything that might entail. The same thought process goes for "niche" games and content. People of all ethnic groups, believe it or not, like hockey. Nearly 50% of football fans are women. Do football fans live in the city or country? Both. White kids like Eminem, and they also like 50 Cent. "Niche" video games find a broad market, and even if you could identify the niche audience, would you speak to them differently? Generally, only if they speak a different language. Do some people live in low income areas or areas that have lower broadband penetration? Sure, and you might someday finagle a way to incorporate that insight into the demographic targeting settings that govern your bidding, as long as you know for sure if those insights mean your targets will be more or less likely to buy your product as a result of their low-income, slow-DSL plight. But you ain't gonna squeeze all of that insight into your brief text ads. So you probably shouldn't try.



What we do know is that 100% of the people looking at your ad are searchers. Most searchers dislike ads that seem to be laser-targeted to someone else. At the other end of the spectrum, most searchers dislike ads that are overly generic. Many searchers will recoil at ads that seem to be written in "ad agency" style with overly stylized "tagline" feel. Searchers who are misled and feel duped once they arrive at a landing page will stab at the back button, making your trickery penny wise and pound foolish as quality score algorithms punish you with high minimum bids.

Possibly the most important thing to do in your early ad tests, then, is not to trip over your own shoelaces trying to be too clever. Your plan needs to be built around the granularity of your prospects, the psychological triggers common to many searchers and customers, and avoiding mistakes that turn searchers off. That sounds funny to say when, depending on the query, upwards of 98% of people won't click on your ad. But within your 1-2% sub-sliver of ad clickers, all else being equal, you should focus on developing consistent techniques to reach the 2% or 3% level faster as opposed to languishing at 0.5%. (In some niches of course you will reach 8-10%. I am talking about the high volume stuff, mainly.)

You've only got 25-35-35 characters, and display URL to work with here. Even so, writing these ads is a sensitive task and early success is vitally important to the economics of your campaign. Find a winning strategy inside of a month, and you are into the initial stages of refinement far ahead of competitors who take months to study their options. Good Luck!

P.S. Rapid iteration won't work with low-volume campaigns. Because of that, it's even more important to start well on lower-volume accounts, because it will be impossible to test your way to the best answer in any reasonable time frame if you start poorly.



3.2 Optimizing Your PPC Campaign

KEYWORDS

When initially setting up your campaigns, DO NOT go to some keyword tool and dump in a gazillion keywords into your ad groups and campaigns — unless you want to boast about how many terms are in your keyword portfolio. The majority of these terms, scored by whatever techniques are going to be junky and low volume — and the engines will penalize you for it. Rather, what to do is hand pick just a few terms per ad group and then borrow ads from competitors that are already bidding on those terms. Sounds simplistic? Well, it is — but it works. Make sure you group your keywords tightly, so they all reflect the same user intent. The engines will choose one of the ads from that ad group to show, so make sure that each keyword is just as relevant for the ad you show.

MONITORING AND OPTIMIZATION

This is probably where most people fall down, because they try to get really fancy and end up spending lots of time optimizing garbage, spending their time in the wrong places. What I do is let a campaign run for a day or two (less if there’s lots of volume) and then look at which terms are driving the most volume, sorting first by clicks descending in AdWords Editor. By the way, if you aren’t using AdWords Editor and are trying to optimize via the web interface, you are handicapped right there because you can’t make bulk changes and do “Excel-like” things like sorting, find/replace, and copying. So spend just a few minutes looking at what keywords are driving the most clicks and see what the conversions are looking like. The question people ask all the time is “How much data do you need to make a decision?” Depends on what the offer payout is. If it’s dating and you’re getting $3, then maybe you’d spend up to $6 on that keyword/ad group to determine whether it’s worth continuing. Or maybe it’s a small biz credit card offer that pays out $150, you’d be willing to spend a lot more. There is a statistical significance formula for calculating sample size that’s based on your expected conversion rate, confidence interval, and threshold for detection — but you don’t need that level of precision here. At this point, you’re trying to get a rough idea of what’s working, not fine tuning. And because your ad groups are focused tightly, you can make decisions on performance based on the overall ad group performance, instead of by keyword.

So if that ad group looks like it’s working, then start spinning off other variants — add those keywords on other match types (assuming there is volume to justify it), come up another ad or two, maybe even bid a little higher. If it’s not working (based on my rule of spending twice the CPA amount), then you need to ruthlessly cut it. And if you’ve run a campaign for a few weeks and there are keywords that have no impressions or clicks, cut them. Don’t be afraid to prune. Same with cutting ads — look at both CTR and conversion rate. The search engines are deciding which ads to show based on what’s making THEM more money — which is based on eCPM. All else equal, Google’s optimization will choose ads that have the highest CTR, even though there is usually a corresponding trade-off in conversion rate. So when testing campaigns, choose the campaign setting to have ads rotate equally — don’t let Google choose. Finding the right balance between making Google money (to get more volume with high CTR) and maximizing your margin is hard. There is a clear trade-off between volume and price, as you have to bid up (or favor higher CTR ads) to get more clicks.



Would you like to have 100 clicks a day that net you 20 cents of profit each or 500 clicks a day at 5 cents profit? I’m taking my first semester of Economics right now, and the teacher tells me that trade-off is elasticity; a measure of how much you need to pay proportionately compared to proportionately how much more volume you can get. Your profit is how many clicks you get times how much you net per click; it’s an inverse relationship, unless you are bidding on tail terms or perhaps certain branded traffic.

You’ll also want to look at your analytics data to get a sense of quality — don’t be just a PPC tool jockey. Check out your landing page bounce rate per keyword. You’ll find that some terms will have a 60%+ bounce rate and should therefore either be cut — or you have to change your landing page. A bounce rate is what percentage of folks bail on your landing page. Most affiliates choose to look only at conversion rate, but bounce rate is a great intermediate metric, since you get a lot more data earlier than having to wait for a conversion. We use our in-house analytics system, by the way, because we don’t want to give the engines our data. For many of our clients, however, we just install Google Analytics, since it’s easy, cheap (free), and has a beautiful UI.

Anyway, the bounce rate is usually a good indicator of eventual conversion, after all, if they leave, they didn’t exactly have a chance to convert. So that will save you some money. If you’re sending people to your own site, you’ll also want to look at keywords that drive organic traffic. Provided you are not a one-page wonder and have a real site with information, then you’ll probably find a fair number of terms that people are coming in on, put those into your PPC campaign. And for terms that have worked well in PPC, start making pages on your site, so you can start ranking for them. I don’t look at things like KEI, LSI, or another TLA (three letter acronym). I rarely even use the Google Adwords API– but do in cases where there is enough volume to make it worth putting automated bid management in place. You do get dinged on using the API, for those who don’t know, so AdWords Editor is a more effective prototyping tool. Once you have something stable, then you can consider scaling it to the moon and using the API.

CREATIVES (ADS and LANDING PAGES)

Affiliates are notorious for copying each other — because if it’s working for someone else, then I ought to do it, too. Plus, it’s the lazy man’s approach. I admit that I do, it, too, since it’s a great starting point. But don’t just be a PPC tool jockey and think that this approach will bring you massive success. You gotta consider for a moment — if I’m doing what everyone else is doing, what kind of results can I realistically expect? It's frustrating when other affiliates copy my ads, what am I going to do, tell them to stop or sue them? Guys, you know who you are. So come up with a clever twist for your ads and landing pages. That slight increase in conversion rate or CTR can allow you to make significant profits even if your PPC campaigns are no better than everyone elses. I highly recommend Tim Armstrong’s book on landing page optimization and promote related products on your landing pages, you already got them there, so might as well increase your chances of converting on something.



SILLY THINGS THAT PEOPLE DO

• Put Content And Search In The Same Campaigns CTR is important in search, but not in content. Plus, on the content network you’re interrupting people, so ad copy must be different. Setting up campaigns that have only one ad group in them, and then putting in a ton of unrelated terms and only one generic ad is an inappropriate use of DKI. Make sure that when using Dynamic Keyword Insertion, your ads make sense. You can dynamically insert the ad, search/content, and a couple other tracking variables in your destination url.

• Weak Negative ListsDon’t just put in a few negative keywords, be clever and find ways to grab a whole list of synonyms. For dating traffic, for example — don’t just put in “carbon” — grab all synonyms related to archaeology, radioactivity, etc. And run placement reports to exclude the content network sites that don’t convert.

• Not Taking The Time To Understand ROIDo this in Excel at first, don’t be mentally lazy and go straight to tools. Just having a calculator doesn’t make you good at math.

• Spending Time Discussing Someone Else’s Lifestyle, Instead of Learning Real SkillsWhen you’re making real, sustainable money, then go get your black card.

• Looking For Shortcuts, Instead of Learning FundamentalsIt’s like fat people and dieting “secrets”. True, tools can help, but become a well-rounded marketer first.

• Not LaunchingBuild and launch campaigns the same day — don’t spend forever building campaigns, get it out there and then learn from the data. Keep incrementally optimizing. It will never be “perfect”.

ROUNDING IT UP

There is much more we can talk about here; the main point to get across is that wins in affiliate have come from being a cross-functional player. Understand a little bit about PPC, analytics, SEO, landing page development, relationship building (to get the best offers and payouts), and creative writing. With a limited reliance on tools and no formal education, you’re able to do reasonably well by coming up with new strategies at the intersections of these areas. for example; monitoring natural and paid rankings together for keywords or using analytics to data drive PPC bids.



3.3 Further Optimizing Your PPC Campaign

So now you have a live account. Whether someone else built it and handed it off to you, or whether it was one that you built yourself, now it's your responsibility to drive results. You've got a lot of other projects to juggle and you might not consider yourself a PPC professional. But that's okay. Here's a surefire way that you can manage campaigns in only an hour a week and be confident that you're doing a decent job. Of course, if the campaigns handed to you are garbage, then that's a different story, you can't make chicken salad out of chicken shitake. The main theme here is to apply your efforts in proportion to observed volume (don't spend time on keywords that get 2 impressions a day) and then progressively sort one metric at a time to make sure you catch anomalies. Choose a set time to go through this process each week. But before you do, a few prerequisites:

1. Google AdWords Editor (AWE)This desktop client is available for both Windows and Mac, get it at google.com/adwordseditor. Unlike the web interface, you can make bulk changes, mass copy ads, make global bid changes, or do a series of complex find-and-replace functions. Tasks that would take you an hour can be done in seconds in the client. More importantly, it allows you to view your entire account at once, so that you can sort by any metric (impressions, clicks, CPC, average position, conversions) on any attribute (keywords, ads, destination url, headline, campaign). Many of the shortcuts in Excel (find, copy, replace, undo) are here. You'll want a monitor that has at least 1920x1200 resolution, preferably 2560x1600, so that you can view all needed columns at once. Don't try to do this on a laptop, since you have to be able to view a dozen columns at once while sorting, which results in either irritating scrolling or columns hidden with "...". If you're running on multiple engines (Yahoo, MSN, Baidu, etc..), there are no comparable tools worth using, whether offered by the engines themselves or available for purchase from third parties.

2. AnalyticsGoogle Analytics and Omniture SearchCenter are pretty good, with the former being free and easy to use. You need to be able to see bounce and conversion rates by keyword, be able to compare the volume of natural versus paid traffic by keyword, and assess landing page conversion rates. Google Analytics does this with ease, as does the internal Blitz analytics platform, should you be an analyst or client of the company. If you are tracking conversions via salesforce.com or Microsoft CRM (meaning that some events take place offline and cannot be captured by a javascript tag firing), then your IT person must provide you a report with conversions by keyword, which you'll use to also help guide your optimizations.

3. Campaign SettingsThe default option is to "show ads evenly", change it to "show as fast as possible". You have to actually go to adwords.google.com to make this change, it's one of the few critical things you cannot do in the client tool. The risk of showing ads as fast as possible is that you can run out of budget before the end of the day. But if you optimize correctly, this won't be an issue, plus, you'll get a lower average CPC and show up on all available searches, instead of artificially denying yourself. If you are bidding on branded terms, whether yours or those of competitors, make sure that they are in their own ad groups and campaigns, not mixed in with general search terms. Branded searches (ones that have a company name or product name/model in them) are navigational and, thus, not truly search. If you don't separate these, you'll overestimate the performance of your PPC campaigns, since branded terms will appear to perform better. Plus, you'll be paying for traffic that you would have had naturally for free.



Now that you're got the prerequisites out of the way, here's the one hour process. With AdWords Editor open, do the following:

1. Manage Top KeywordsStart at the account level and sort metrics descending. The account level is the left vertical navigation, so you should be at the top level. For the right side's horizontal navigation, start on the keywords tab. If you are spending more than $1k a day, look at the last 7 days, else default to the last 30 days.

Here is the order to sort metrics by: 1. Clicks2. Spend3. Conversions4. Cost per conversion5. Average position

Each time look at just the top ten keywords. Do you see a pattern in what terms you're spending money on? If a particular term represents a lot of good traffic, create a new ad group for it, and in that ad group, create multiple match types for those terms, add similar terms, and write new ads. This is called the "paste and stick" method by Andrew Goodman (who last week came out with a second edition to his Ultimate Adwords Guide, by the way). If any term is performing well, then look at the average position. If it's any worse than 3rd position, bid it up. How much to bid it up by? Assume a 25% increase in average CPC for each position increase. Note that the impact is not just a 25% increase in cost, you're paying more per click and also getting more clicks. In making a decision about what is "better", shoot for at least 100 clicks as a rule of thumb, so that you don't make decisions based on statistical noise. The higher your average conversion rate, the fewer clicks you need to make a decision, and the converse is true.

For the last sort metric I mentioned, average position, you are sorting descending to determine if any of these keywords that are not in the top 10 are worth bidding up significantly to get them onto the first page. The keyword step in the optimization process is the most critical, since that then drives the rest of your time in making bid changes, creating new ad groups, creating new ads, and so forth. This process cannot be automated, since only a human can look at this sorted data and develop hypotheses on why certain keywords, ads, and landing pages are working or not. This is a creative process, not a mindless exercise.

2. Prune The GarbageStill on the keywords tab, now sort ascending by clicks.

Delete any keyword that has had 0 clicks in the last 30 days, excluding inactive terms. No traffic on keywords will hurt your campaigns quality score. This is the "binge and purge" of PPC, where you've evaluated the "winners" and created more variations, while at the same time, trimmed the non-performers. Done right, and you're unlikely to exceed the 40k default limit on keywords. If you're a larger agency, you can request an exception and Google will allow you to have 100k keywords as a default limit in your account. We've had some clients with nearly a million keywords, this only applies if you have an national customer base or are playing in a highly competitive affiliate space.



As you're pruning, you'll discover patterns in what doesn't convert. For example, if you're a bank selling mortgages, when "bad credit" is in the keyword, they're likely to have a low conversion rate. Now that you've noticed this, don't just delete all keywords that have "bad credit" in them, rather, do a "replace", switching out "bad credit" with a blank. This prevents you from unnecessarily deleting what could be a good keyword. But it could also create a duplicate keyword, since now "home equity loan bad credit" will be a duplicate of "home equity loan", which you already have. When you have duplicates or other such errors, sort by the second column, which is unmarked, but represent status.

When you've taken care of the issues, the red circles at the keyword and ad group level will disappear. If anything within an ad group has a problem (keyword duplicates, no active ads in ad group, maximum bid too high, too many keywords, etc..) you'll see the ad group turn red. It will usually tell you the reason why when you select it. If yellow, it's a warning that you can probably ignore. If red, it's not allowed to post from AWE, so take care of this right away, else your client and the live account will differ.

3. NegativesAs you notice terms that are "bad", such as "carbon" in "carbon dating" for a dating website, add them as negative keywords at the campaign level. Unless you are really sophisticated, don't mess with adding negative keywords to the ad group or keyword level. You're allowed 10k keywords in your account. You might even do WordTracker or Google Suggest on some of your favorite keywords to grab more negative keywords.

You can expect that negatives will add a 10-15% performance increase to your account, whether via lower CPC, better conversion rate, better CTR, and so forth. Epiar is a company that sells negative keyword lists and if you're willing to spend $5-10k for a negative list, may be worthwhile. If you're spending $50k a month or more, then it's worth doing. You'll also want to run some placement reports (do this via the web) and find what content sites are converting poorly, ruthlessly add them to your negative list. And sites that convert well (for example, gmail.com), create new placement targets in your content campaigns, so you can single these sites out. When you paste new negative keywords into one campaign, make sure you paste them into all the other campaigns. Good old "control C" (copy) and "control V" (paste) make this a few seconds of work.

4. AnalyticsNow go to Google Analytics and hit the "traffic sources" tab.

Then click on the "full report" for keywords on the right side, filtering for paid search only.

Look at the top 20 terms. Anything that has a bounce rate of 70% or greater, immediately delete from the account. If it's between 50 and 70%, then you have to consider whether the problem lies in the keyword itself or the ad copy.

In AWE, now switch to the "text ad" and sort by clicks descending. Look for any clear discrepancies in conversion rate between ads, keeping in mind that you can only compare performance of ads that are within the same ad group (for example, you can't compare branded with non-branded). In case you aren't able to see conversion rates in AWE, either you have not enabled conversion tracking (AdWords conversion tracking is not the same as Analytics tracking, they are two separate javascript codes), or



didn't check the box to show that in your reports (the furthest right column lets you select what metrics to show). It may also be an issue of poor landing pages. So now go to the "content" section in the left hand navigation of Google Analytics. Having to compare data between AWE and Google Analytics can seem confusing the first few times, but will quickly become second nature. Each of your landing page variations should have a unique url, which will allow you to compare bounce rates between them. Ideally, you'd like to see 100 clicks for each variation before passing judgment, so if you have 2 variations, you want 200 clicks.

Have your time period default to the last 30 days. This should give you an idea of what elements in your landing pages are working, such that you can tweak images, headlines, body copy, button copy, and so forth. If you're reasonably sophisticated, you should use Google Website Optimizer (GWO), which is semi-automated landing page testing that's integrated into AdWords. Else, use common sense.

Bounce rates are high usually because the landing page doesn't tie specifically with the keyword you bid on or not delivering upon a promise you made in the ad copy.

5. Quality ScoreGo back to the keywords tab and sort by minimum CPC bid descending.

Look at anything that is $5 or higher, since that is a "Google slap". Google thinks that your ads and landing pages have very little to do with that keyword, so they are forcing you to bid a certain amount to even be able to show your ad. This is not the same as your average CPC being high. You can be paying $10 a click because you're bidding on a highly competitive keyword, but with a decent Quality Score, your minimum required bid can still be 50 cents.

The latest version of AWE now shows Quality Score, else you can get it on the web. Look at any keyword that is not at least an 8. If anything less, then you need to re-group keywords into tighter themes, write new ads, and find more relevant landing pages.

6. Add New Stuff Do a search on each of your top 10 keywords. Look at the competitor ads that are showing on the first page. Do any of them look attractive? If so, shamelessy copy them.

If those ads have been running a long time, especially at top positions, odds are that those ads are working well for your competitor, else they have been asleep at the wheel and burning cash.

Also, look at your top keywords in Google Analytics, this time, filtering for natural traffic only. Load all those keywords into your PPC campaigns, even misspellings and urls. But you want mispellings and urls to be in their own ad groups. Last thing you want is to do something like Dynamic Keyword Insertion in your headline with those terms. Maybe you see some intriguing banner ads on various content sites, again, shamelessy copy them to see how they work for you.



This may seem like a difficult process that will take more than an hour to complete. Maybe the first couple times around. However, with some practice, you'll get quite familiar with it and be able to whiz through it naturally, without needing notes. You'll become intuitive about what traffic is working or not working and be able to drill down instantly into why things changed. By doing a "Top N" on keywords or other attribute, sorted on metrics, you can always make sure you hit the most important items first. Depending on your speed and time available, N might be 10 items, 20 items, or another number.

7. Final Check• Do you have anything with a red circle that needs fixing? • Are there ad groups that don't have at least 2 ads in them, so that you can A/B test? • Do you have any keywords that are still inactive? • Are you more than 10% off where you should be pacing on your monthly budgets? Then either

adjust your bids or change your budgets.

When all looks good, hit "upload changes" and make sure to make an archived copy of your account. Who knows what crazy things can happen when you don't save your work? We've all had those moments when we spent an hour writing a paper in Word, only to have it crash on us without having saved it. Often when you hit "upload", the system will come back with new errors. Thus, anything with a red circle still or is still in bold (meaning new, unposted changes), must be fixed.



3.4 PPC Bid Rules and Optimization

The Strategy Behind Local Bid OptimizationIn the absence of campaign history, against which the system can bid to a CPA or CPC target, we have to use rules of thumb to determine bids on brand new campaigns. Florist keywords might be only 30 cents, while specialized legal terms may be a couple hundred dollars. Then there are terms that might be $5-$10 for enterprise software products, roofing contractors, moving companies, and so forth. Webvisible (RH Donnelly) used to sell a guaranteed click program at about a dollar a click, as they thought it would balance out across all categories. That strategy left some folks horribly overpaying and other businesses not getting enough traffic.

We also cannot use the same bid strategies that we use for CPA deals. When you aim to maximize profit, spend becomes the dependent variable. And the converse is true, by aiming to spend exactly $X per month, you suboptimize for profit. So the order of bid optimization rules goes like this....

Monthly BudgetAnyone less than $1k a month is hard to work with, so use $1k as a floor except in rare cases. Dentists should be $1.5k to $2k a month. Lawyers should be $1k a month per attorney in the office, so a law firm with 20 attorneys should be $20k a month. If you don't know what to estimate, then go with either 30% of their overall marketing budget or $500 a month per employee. We should be able to get a spend close to what they're spending on yellow pages, if they're doing that already. While we'd like to get folks to switch budget from paper yellow pages to PPC, in practice, this is hard because of how ad seniority works. Your yellow pages priority (how close you are to the front of the section) is determined by how long you've been continuously advertising at that ad size (for example, double truck, which is two pages side by side).

The budget figure is first estimated by the sales tool, based on a category and geo selected by the analyst. For now, assume a default figure per category (I'll determine those lookup values), which later can be factored up by size of metro area (keep same for now, though NYC should be 2x to 3x). This estimated figure should then be multiplied by 170% to determine the "dominant" budget and multiplied by 70% to get the "represent" budget. The default middle choice is the "perform" budget. Like Goldilocks, this makes the middle option look reasonable, but still allows for those certain folks that "must" have the premium option.

Note that this budget figure has our 30% management fee built in. So a $1,000 client budget is actually $700 in spend. And the media spend is the figure we're optimizing against here. For simplicity, our reports will show our fees rolled in, so a 70 cent click will show up as $1 in client reports. In other words, multiply actual click cost by 1.4286 to show total cost to client.

Should the client balk at any of these figures, you can use the same technique Google salespeople employ, to spend any less won't be enough to drive results. Plus, you can always adjust campaign budgets up and down based on performance.

Default Engine BudgetsLet's allocate that monthly media budget at 75% Google, 20% Yahoo and 5% MSN. Traffic quality and volume do differ by search engine, so this is just a starting point until we gather data. So if we have a $1,000 monthly budget (which is the number AFTER we take our 30% margin), then $750 goes to Google, $200 goes to Yahoo, and $50 goes to MSN.



Default Campaign BudgetsA Google account will have multiple campaigns, a nationally-targeted search campaign, geo-targeted search campaign, and geo-targeted content. If we do something custom, they may have many more. As far as I know, budgets are set at the campaign level, so if the client has 3 campaigns in Google and a Google budget of $600, then we have to be smart about allocating this across the 3 campaigns. I recommend 65% on the geo-targeted search campaigns (which means non-geo terms), 25% on nationally targeted search campaigns (which means geo terms), and 10% on geo-targeted content. Any of these defaults may change, whether for the master category defaults or for individual clients (based on campaign performance).

Default Ad Group BidsJust like with default budgets for each category, we should start with default max CPC on ad groups for search, until we gather better data. But until that lookup table is built (which you can also derive by scraping spyfu on top terms in a category, take the midpoint of the high and low CPC figures), you can use $1.25 as a default search bid for ad groups that are geo-multiplied and $1 for campaigns that are geo-targeted but have non-geo terms. On branded traffic, bid at $1.50 max CPC. Use the same percentages across all categories for initial defaults, for example, if the geo-targeted default bids on dentists are $2, then do $2.50 on geo-multiplied terms and $3 on branded traffic (800 dentist, 1800dentist.com, etc...) Content campaigns, which should be separated from search (duplicated), bid at 40% of search bids. These are ad group default bids, not keyword level bids.

Ad Group Bid OptimizationThe primary goal is to spend exactly the client's budget and to do so evenly over the course of the month. Finding that balance is tough over the first two weeks of account launch. After the campaign has been live for 7 days, compare actual spend against 7/30th of the monthly budget. If we are more than 25% less than the target, then bid up ad group defaults by 1.3 times that percentage (so that we can catch up), then send an alert to the analyst. At 14 days into the account, we perform the same check, this time comparing actual spend against 14/30th of the target budget. If more than 20% off, then bid up by that percentage times 2.

At no point should we exceed the campaign budget by more than 10% or so, since Google automatically caps the campaigns. If we are hitting that cap, then we would be overbidding and running out of budget during the middle of the day. Ideally, the daily budget should run out right before midnight. Using the default "spread out evenly" option in campaign settings does not help us achieve our goals, since it just spreads out missing opportunities to serve over the course of the day, rather than lowering bids so that we can maximize exposure and clicks. So we want to use the "serve as fast as possible" option, which may or may not be available in the API.

Keyword Bid OptimizationIf there is no conversion tracking in place (which would allow us to manage to a CPA target), then we're forced to minimize CPC and bid to position instead. First step here is to determine the head and tail terms.

Head terms are the top 20 across all search terms in the account (not just within a particular ad group), based on number of clicks. 20 is an arbitrary figure, as are many of these figures, but it's sufficiently high enough to cover the majority of a client's keywords (because volume falls off really quickly after the first 10),



while also not killing us on API usage charges (we get banged every time we make a bid change, load a new keyword, etc...) For head terms, bid to at least 3rd position or until we expect to run out of budget, whichever comes first. If we're expecting to run out of budget by more than 20%, then send an alert to the analyst, letting them know to contact the client to ask for more money and why (because we can drive X more clicks with Y more dollars).

When bidding up, you can use normalized curves to determine how much more you should bid to move from A position to B position. Ming from Yahoo has that curve, ping me for it. Else, just increase bids by 25% each time, up to a max of 4 times the average CPC of the account. We have to cap it here, since there is a chance that a non-relevant terms can sneak into an ad group and drain the budget. Then again, there may be specialty, highly relevant terms that we just can't get enough of at any point. Should a term hit this 4x limit, send an alert to the analyst.

If it's not a head term, then it's tail by default. We treat all tail terms within an ad group as homogeneous, so we adjust ad group default bids, not individual keyword bids. In this case, we also want to bid to position 4 or better. Look at a rolling 30 days of history (or however many days are available) to make a decision.

If a term has received zero impressions over the last 30 days (doesn't have to be exact), then delete it. Dead terms hurt your quality score. Run the bid optimization routine every week, which gives us enough time to gather data and make changes, but yet won't get us killed on API usage charges.

Conversion Bid OptimizationWe need a lookup table to set CPA targets for each vertical. A conversion can be either a phone call (from our web-only number) or form filled out. I don't have a sense of which one is better quality, so let's assume for now that they are worth the same. Conversion optimization doesn't kick in until we've had a month of the above optimization and we have conversion tracking in place. At that point, we should have enough data to make tweaks. If it's a head term, and we've spent more than 3 times the CPA target for as far back in time as you can go and have yet to receive a conversion, then cut the bids by 70%. If it's a head term, we see at least 3 conversions over the last 90 days and our actual CPA is under the target CPA, then bid up by a factor equal to the target CPA divided by the actual CPA. If it's only 1 or 2 conversions, then ignore.

If the ad group (not counting the head terms) meets the same conditions (already spent 3 times the CPA target for all time or did at least 3 conversions in the last 90 days), then apply the bid changes to the ad group default bid.

Once a keyword (head term) or ad group (sum of all tail terms in that group) has been affected by conversion optimization, then we don't apply position or CPC-based optimization again. But for terms that don't have enough data to meet the two criteria, then continue to use position and CPC-based logic. Optimizing to conversions requires joining phone and lead data against PPC spend.



3.5 The Largest Player in the Space Buys a PPC Company

Webvisible is the largest player in local online marketing, you probably haven't heard of them because there aren't any established players yet, and also because they white label to the offline yellow page publishers. They, like most of the other players were founded by sales people, not technology folks with hands-on experience, so this is their way to try to fill in the holes. WebVisible all along has claimed a superior technology platform, they call it Geneva, since they are "agnostic" to all search engines. I've looked under the hood and can tell you that there is little in the way of bid optimization there, but how is a non-technical person to know?

Adapt, out of Padadena, CA, was started by a middle level product manager from Overture (which was the PPC arm of Yahoo!). I spoke with those folks, their head of engineering and their head of business development, about 16 months ago, since they wanted to license us their newly launched platform. Our 40 minute call was somewhat embarrassing, since they couldn't answer fundamental questions about bid optimization, how does the system determine when to make a bid adjustment, how much data does it need to make that decision, how about re-organizing keywords into tighter ad groups, how to test landing pages, and so forth. Proprietary this and that. To be fair, their tools have come a long way since then, including in price, up!

I'm so glad that we are focused on execution and engineering that's borne out of experience. Other companies that don't have technology will want to buy us, there aren't many players out there to choose from. But we won't sell. Eventually, the sales companies will have bought their favorite engineering companies. While they're reeling from indigestion, trying to integrate system and staff from two companies, we'll be sailing right along. It's a classic tortoise and the hare. We will be the winners in the local online advertising game in 3-5 years, though others are growing much faster right now.

Nov. 25th 2008



3.6 Paid Search Automation: Choosing A Vendor

I believe that systems are in place to implement dumb rules and repetitive tasks. Without getting into the philosophy of software development in general, let me say that I firmly believe the biggest gaps in the marketplace are in the PEOPLE needed to operate the software. Sure, the current sophistication of PPC software is crap — it drives me nuts that we have so many mundane manual things to do for our clients — but the primary pain (everyone is feeling this in analytics, PPC, SEO, whatever) is the lack of qualified people.

You know, we hired the largest agency in India to do PPC for US-based clients. They had all the big names in India — the major banks, airlines, retail chains, etc. — and I am still good friends with the founder/CEO. These are clients that are spending upwards of $1MM a month — and they have massive teams on projects, as can only be done in India. That pilot lasted all of 3.5 months before we had to painfully pull the plug on it. The work done there was complete throwaway. And just ONE guy from our team albeit, an expensive guy — did more work than the 6 Indians we had full-time on a couple projects. That's what prompted my frustrating Facebook comment about the Indians. At one point, we had 25 Indians working on PPC — and I had flown out to India to train these guys for a week — to follow a semi-canned process to build master template campaigns to be multiplied by our system. But the quality wasn't there — not sufficient cultural knowledge and not any entrepreneurial motivation.

I think Trada has a shot at solving this issue because of the entrepreneurial incentives, your soon-to-be implemented rating system, and hopefully some tools that help automate data analysis and mundane sorts of tasks (generating like keywords, CPA-based bidding, ripping off like ads, etc...). I still believe in the market model that relies upon the invisible hand of many participants, yet I still believe in a massive upgrade in the dumb tools we have. I don't see these as being contradictory.

These are comments to the following article:

Paid Search Automation: Choosing A Vendorby Andrew Goodman

In the previous two columns, I covered questionable assumptions and inconvenient truths related to bid management automation in paid search. With all those reservations and concerns out of the way, if you're in the market for a solution vendor, you still have to form a relationship with one that meets your needs. Let's look at some criteria that might help you choose.

Requisite Full DisclosureThere are many viable bid automation options. At this stage, it's important to reveal the author's biases and business relationships, if any. I've done my best to try out such tools over the years. The fact that the field changes quickly confers an advantage to vendors with the resources to update their software to reflect changing paid search platforms and changing tactical requirements. It also confers an advantage to "late movers" who have studied buyers' needs and are in the process of building out their tools today. I'm on the Advisory Boards of two such vendors: (1) Clickable, a New-York-based paid search campaign management vendor that has closed significant rounds of venture capital funding led by the likes of Union Square Ventures; (2) Acquisio, a Montreal-based firm that gained its chops as a search marketing agency but today focuses on software. Acquisio has some private investors and is



nearing the close of a Series A round of venture capital funding.

I've heard many good things about Click Equations, which boasts Avinash Kaushik as an advocate and adviser; and Adapt, recently acquired by WebVisible. Kenshoo is another hard-charging new entrant into the space, with recent funding from the likes of Sequoia Capital. I have no formal ties to these or any other vendors in the bid management space.

Where Are The Happy Customers?Speaking of bias, it's hard to get neutral answers about this technology from users in the field. Informal surveys of real users don't tend to get you positive mentions at all. Many users I've run across offer only lukewarm support for their bid management vendor, and many times when you ask, users will signal that they intend to switch vendors or simply stop using third-party tools. There are many reasons for this, but I would cite a lack of trust and customer support, as well as unimpressive ROI, as common reasons for discontinuing use of legacy bid management tools. Cumbersome usability would be another.

Despite repeated efforts to probe for neutral contributions to the "pro-automation" side of this debate, the preponderance of those who speak up on this subject take a like-minded position to the one I've held for years: automation can hurt more than it helps, and talented, passionate marketers and analysts are in such short supply that this human element is the main variable that will make or break your campaign. Lance Loveday echoed the sentiments of many with a satirical take on "push-button marketing" in his recent SEL column. An observer of the UK search marketing scene recently posted to the SEM 2.0 group: "Human skill involved in search is undersold, is undervalued. The importance of the people that run the campaigns in the search equation is more important than ever and all I seem to hear from agencies, aside from those above and some US agencies ~ last 24 months are that they save us money or they bring technical proprietary to the table."

As I mentioned in a previous column, if you couple that sentiment with the fact that those talented and passionate marketers will have plenty of support and automation offered to them from the first parties (search engines) themselves, third-party sellers of automated tools must make their case in an increasingly crowded and skeptical marketplace.

But assuming you understand all that, automation can save time and money. So I hope this list of general criteria offer food for thought in your upcoming vendor selection efforts.

Criteria For Choosing a Bid Management Automation VendorI'll divide these into two categories: general or corporate characteristics, and features. The general points about your business relationship with the vendor are actually more important, given that feature sets change rapidly.

General CriteriaBefore zooming in to look at individual vendors, it pays to consider these broader issues first:

AppropriatenessYour business needs to be buying enough paid search clicks, and facing certain key challenges with the lack of available automation, to make it even worthwhile to use some of the sophisticated third-party tools out there. Very sophisticated tools that make frequent bid changes, and do other Stupid Non-Human Tricks, may only be suitable for 1-5% of the market: typically, high volume, low-margin retailers in fast-moving markets. Even with more appropriate and less expensive tools, sometimes the cost and learning curve may outweigh the benefit if your spend is small. The classic target market for many of these tools is an agency that manages multiple accounts. But some vendors in the space are targeting a large number of small to midsized



businesses. I'm not sure that's going to work out.

Trust, independence, and privacy policies. In this space, I tend to favor pure software plays over those that are tethered to the service operations of an agency. From the agency's standpoint, automated tools can be a powerful selling point, and a powerful barrier to switching. From your standpoint, though: if you're an agency, it's inevitable that using or recommending one of these tools is going to offer a competing agency the chance to poach your clients, or at the very least study their behavior. If you're the client, you may find that there is a fear factor in discontinuing your contract with the agency that promotes its own automation tools, so you're overly dependent on the agency.

The flip side to that concern: a well-integrated service and solution offering can be the best of both worlds, providing a smooth and convenient process. Independence is an issue in general. Few of these vendors are built to last. Acquisitions are not always disruptive, but if the acquirer is a big search engine company, then this may defeat the purpose of using a third-party, independent tool. There's no question that in using paid search automation you're handing your back end business data over to yet another vendor. In this regard, the general as well as personal characteristics of vendors are important. If the vendor has a track record of respecting privacy policies, and not seeming "snoopy," that's good.

Cost, total cost of ownership, and Kool-Aid threshold. Don't put off the question of how much the tool and associated services cost. Ask early, and often, and ask if you will pay extra if you go over an allotted amount of account activity. Then ask yourself if the learning curve to become proficient with the tool is going to pay for itself in the next 6-12 months. Less strictly speaking, if it seems like the relationship with the vendor will be too high on your agenda and get in the way of other work, you might decide it just isn't worth the hassle. Remember, you're trying to simplify and optimize your own business, not join someone else's cult.

Momentum and standards. No technology is forever, but most of us out here are looking to ride periods of continuity in standards for all they're worth until such time as we need to jump on something else. Being constantly in evaluation mode is disruptive. We want to be productive. So if something bills itself as a "platform," it had better turn out to be just that, not some kind of techno-wobble-board that sends you flying after a few short months. In the web analytics space, for example, a tiny minority of vendors have been big or long-lived enough to evolve almost into "the" standard: WebTrends and Google Analytics qualify here. In ad serving, enough agencies and practitioners worked with their specific technologies, that DoubleClick and their DART became accepted as a standard. Enough people used third-party paid search bid management system Atlas that their URL tagging system became close to a standard for awhile.

My confidence level in a paid search bid platform as a long term play with momentum depends in part on who comes out on top of a messy struggle for supremacy. And that in turn likely rests on continued growth in the overall dollars being invested in the channel, and these tools' adaptability to the long-term challenge of buying and managing other auction-based media. I think all of this will come true: the number of dollars being spent by the typical company through the AdWords-style auction environment may still have a long way to run (say, a five or tenfold increase from where we are today); and one or two third-party platforms will emerge from the heap as standards many of us rely on to facilitate the tasks at hand.

Features and benefitsHere are some high level criteria to look for. This doesn't drill down to every detail.

Workflow. No one got into the SEM industry so they could feel like they were doing a rote job, akin to working in the bowels of a bank processing center. This sentiment of course is neatly encapsulated in Acquisio's famed t-shirts that read "I HATE DOING THIS SHIT." The "stuff" (like managing individual bids, doing global changes to ads, etc.) that account directors hate doing is more fun when automation speeds that process rather than making you an extension of the machine. Clickable, for their part, has contributed fresh thinking to our



industry by focusing on an intuitive user interface rather than forcing users to shape their workflow to the demands of a spreadsheet-era tool.

Today's best newer-generation tools combine the concept of "alert based" or "decision support" automation with priority-setting. So to take the Clickable example, the human analyst, not the system, is still running the campaign. The analyst's decision making is supported by a prioritized alert system that means the human doesn't have to pore through long lists of data and recommendations. I'd be remiss here if I didn't add that the third party tools need to be better than free Google AdWords Editor at all this. They should provide helpful aids such as competitive intelligence and ad copy support, built right into the interface. This type of functionality is going to continue to evolve, but only a handful of vendors have the diverse product development chops to make it all come together.

Sophistication where appropriate. If possible, look for aspects of sophisticated computation methods that would be a natural extension of your own campaign strategy. Some of this might include improved grouping, and predictive models that help you bid accurately on low-volume keywords based on a portfolio approach (only a few vendors are likely to have the sophistication to actually pull this off). Another set of cool features should be interesting bid rules that might come in handy to an experienced campaign manager, above and beyond the simple "target CPA" bid rule and other simple features that are already built into the search engines' own interfaces. Acquisio is currently rolling out several innovative bid rules. Some vendors in the space now offer enhancements like better attribution and other analytics features you just can't get with free products like Google Analytics. That's gotta be a plus. One or two vendors offer proper support for designing multivariate tests for ads. Given that my agency was one of a handful that pioneered structured multivariate testing of rotating paid search ads (as opposed to landing pages, the more common form of multivariate testing in the digital marketing space to this day), all we can say is: what took you so long?

These ideas just scratch the surface. Overall, you shouldn't be blown away by general technology claims (of the "same materials used in space shuttles!" variety). But smart is good, especially if it helps to plug holes left by free offerings.

To wrap up, my personal curiosity about technology platforms in the field of accountable digital advertising leads me to wonder about a couple of other criteria or factors driving change in this sector. The first is about platform scalability: are too many vendors essentially hacking out semi-robust demos based on their development team's initial technology recommendations, using languages and protocols that won't scale? (But people have said the same about everything from AOL to Twitter. Usually if you get big enough, you can adapt.)

The other question in my mind is about consolidation. I mentioned standards earlier. While not quite winner-take-all, the sector cries out for leadership, and said leadership will mean that also-rans fall out of the race. Clearly two things have to happen in this space for the benefit of end users. First, some of the current vendors need to merge or some need to die off by attrition. Second, vendors will need to sort themselves out so that they target different subsets of the market. That scenario is already well underway, and it points towards the Occam's Razor of more consolidation but maintaining some diversity of solutions for different needs.

We're not quite done yet! Next time, I'll review a bid management horror story. It's a real page-turner.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the author, and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

March 10. 2009



The Social Impact



Chapter 1: Promoting Yourself in Social Media

Leveraging Your Business

LEVERAGING YOUR BUSINESSYour reputation is everywhere, whether you are aware of it or not.

You must take steps to manage it.Too many social networks, not enough time.



Social ad targeting

Show ads to:Friends of the personpeople who have similar profiles(same set of attributes– demo, geo, interests)people who have similar behavior(look alike models)

Therefore we are:Building a user database that pulls in all this data: profile data, top friends, behavioral flags Applying statistical methods to find look-alikes, do “market basket” on portfolio, calculate RFM, predict next logical recommended app, predict churn and viral elements.

Grouping profiles into targets derived buckets for “auto enthusiasts”, “college students”, “influencers”, “young urban professionals”, “in market for credit cards”, etc… profile buckets to align with what’s most attractive to advertisers.

Doing testing to measure lift on targeting efforts.

Building Your Social User Database



Social ad targeting

Show ads to:Friends of the personpeople who have similar profiles(same set of attributes– demo, geo, interests)people who have similar behavior(look alike models)

Therefore we are:Building a user database that pulls in all this data: profile data, top friends, behavioral flags Applying statistical methods to find look-alikes, do “market basket” on portfolio, calculate RFM, predict next logical recommended app, predict churn and viral elements.

Grouping profiles into targets derived buckets for “auto enthusiasts”, “college students”, “influencers”, “young urban professionals”, “in market for credit cards”, etc… profile buckets to align with what’s most attractive to advertisers.

Doing testing to measure lift on targeting efforts.



Why does display inventory monetize so poorly?

Technique

show the same ads to everyone.

show that ad many times to the same person.

message blasted from third party– not a friend’s recommendation.

Creatives designed to distract, not engage.

Effect

messages are irrelevant to the user, causing low CTR.

inventory wasted. 20% of users consume 80% of the impressions, wasting up to half of network inventory.

conversion rates suffer via brute force marketing, as opposed to trusted relationships. Brand erosion for both advertiser and publisher (image if the WSJ were to run Viagra ads).

“congratulations, you’re visitor #999,999” and “shoot the monkey” attempt to overcome banner blindness. They shout louder, instead of becoming part of the user experience.

Solution

targeting by user’s profile fields, observed behavior, observed behavior of friends.

frequency caps, negation targeting, geo, time of day, flighting (based on level of engagement), Markov models (next likely step)

“social ads”: show ads to Y that her friend X liked. Show X’s picture– build from trust. Avoid ads that are misleading– “magic” weight loss and “free” ringtones.

value the relationship. Points-based system is inherently a loyalty program– incent retention. Users understand the value of reputation management and will enjoy game dynamics.

Irrelevant messages are “spam”Well-targeted messages are “recommendations”

Untargeted

ADS



Maximizing revenue via relevancy

eCPM = earnings per thousand impressions

Goal: get more pageviews and increase revenue per pageview

eCPC = revenue per click

X

TrafficNew Users Page Views / Use Retention rate

eCPMCTR Conversion Rate eCPC

=



Because social media is about leveraging relationships, you want to promote your business in every single interaction you have on the web.

Do you have your website in your email signature line? How about also putting in your Facebook vanity URL, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other handles? If you’re not doing that, you’re wasting valuable opportunity to let people know about your business. And when people forward your email to other people, those new people will also see your signature line, so it’s not just for people you already know.

Here’s an example of a stay-at-home dad who is now a professional blogger on parenting topics. By running ads to your Facebook fan page, you’re likely to generate more fans at a lower cost per visit. Users are more likely to stay on Facebook, than leave. And when they become a fan, you have the opportunity to connect with them right there, instead of just sending them to a page and not being able to see them again. If you’re truly about building a lasting business, then you want to invest in building up long-term relationships with your users.

CONCLUSION: You want to connect your niche idea to as many people as you can, leveraging you existing trust. In the next section, we'll discuss how to multiply across multiple social media sites.



Chapter 2: Multiply Like A Virus

We mean viral marketing, not virus marketing! But the analogy works. Start by creating rich profiles at Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Bebo, and Yahoo360, but don’t just copy the profile information exactly. Make each profile slightly different, not just because of duplicate content penalties come from SEO, but because each social network has a slightly different bias. A rich profile means putting in as much data as you can: videos, photos, blog posts (More on that below), links, and descriptions. Don’t just put in the URL and a one sentence description — weak.

Even Google.com lets you create your own profile now. Having one of these on your side gets you priority on Google, which is crucial to upholding your reputation and eliminating irrelevant / negative results. You always want to rank not only for your product name, but your name as well.

Make sure to grow your profile across each network, then chain them together. Networks like Facebook and LinkedIn can be tied to your Twitter account, which eliminates the need for you to waste time having to update your profiles when you want to post a new message.

You may want to consider creating multiple profiles on each network. For example, you should create a Facebook profile and a fan page. But wouldn’t a fan page also be redundant? Not necessarily — you might create multiple fan pages, one for each product that you’re selling. Plus, you can run Facebook self-serve ads to your fan pages, which you can’t do for your profile.

CONCLUSION: Don't force people to use Facebook, Bebo, Twitter, Yahoo360, or whatever site — put yourself on all of them and meet people there. Use a service that allows you to update once and have it automatically update all your statuses.




Chapter 3: Anatomy

Keywords

Anatomy of Analytics

Site urls that other users pin from

Account Names

Repins(user-level information captured)

Likes(user-level information captured)

Comments

Different boards it’s pinned to

Keywords


Site urls that other users pin from

Account Names

Repins(user-level information captured)

Likes(user-level information captured)

Comments

Different boards it’s pinned to



202 BlitzMetricsTM Facebook Training Guide

Publisher(linked to website)

Comments


Engagement

Audience

Views

Views, Likes & Dislikes(user-level information captured)

Video Statistics




Followers

Tweet to


Mention

Retweets

Tweet Users Favorited

Account Name




Anatomy of AnalyticsAnatomy of Analytics

Followers

Link to Website

Likes

Comment

Likes

Comments

Post to Facebook


Followers

Link to Website

Likes

Comment

Likes

Comments

Post to Facebook



Chapter 4: Twitter Friending Rules

Twitter, for the most part, is a massive waste of time. So how can you use Twitter effectively? And Facebook, for that matter?

• Some folks use massive auto-follow program, similar to the old days of MySpace trains — where the number of friends is what counted, even if they were all robots. Don’t do this unless you just want to boast that you have 10,000 fans, but care little about quality.

• Some folks game the system by following a ton of folks, then unfollowing those who don’t return the favor. That’s the binge and purge method - you eat until you puke, then stuff your face again. At the end of the process, you seemingly have a large fan base, yet don’t follow many people. So clearly you must be popular. Twitter does have rules on how many follows you can do each day. Still - a terrible strategy.

• Others just follow whoever their friends follow. An acceptable strategy, as these are likely to be people you know and are interesting to you. And you have a better likelihood of actually interacting with them, as well as them paying genuine interest in what you tweet, amongst the heaps of garbage that float down this vast river of tweets.

But the best strategy? Follow those people who are popular in the niche that you’re blogging about. Create a list of them, comment on their blog posts, follow them. When they follow you back, then send them a Direct Message. Then friend them on every other profile you have, which then gets injected into the feeds of other people they know. When you have critical mass, now you’re one of those people who are prominent in your topic.

Thus, you are establishing a clear focus on what you’re tweeting about. You’re about ONE thing, not the pasta you had for dinner, the fact you’re going to bed, the inside joke that nobody else gets, or something off topic. If not, you might listen to the radio on auto-scan mode, where it changes the station every 3 seconds — it’s torture listening to random drivel.

Instead, stick with one station and have that be consistent across your blog, social media profiles, email signatures, and so forth. Other people will clearly understand you as THE person who is all about your particular niche.

You can’t be known for 27 different niches — people’s brains cannot digest that.

Now what about people that fan you? Most of them are irrelevant. You can safely ignore most of them. But from time to time, go through your list and see if they are saying something about your topic. Discard them if they:• Have a blank profile• Follow more people than follow them• Ever tweet self-promotional items - it’s a spam channel or bot or idiot - all the same, anyway.• Have thousands of tweets - odds are they’re spewing drivel about what they ate or something.




CONCLUSION: Don't make friends with everyone — as in the real world, make real friends with the folks who count in your niche and extend that friendship to Facebook, email, and even in person!

• Always make sure you have a good avatar. It should be square in order to maintain aspect ratio and it should be visually memorable.

• Block spammers who follow you. You don’t want your follow count to be inflated by spammers.

• Do NOT send auto Direct Messages — it’s spam and it pisses people off.

• Use your real name as your Twitter handle, and if you refuse to do that or your name isn’t available use a memorable short handle.

• Don’t claim to be an expert in your bio — strive for accuracy while still being modest. Especially don’t do it in your handle.

• Having a custom background is key — don’t choose a default background, make one that has your other profiles in them so you can cross-promote. Sure, it’s an image, but people can at least see the url of your website and go check out what you have there.

Tip : Use our background + badge generator here:http://www.facebook.com/blitzsocial?sk=app_214033345279870

Other Twitter Tips


http://www.facebook.com/blitzsocial?sk=app_214033345279870



• If you don’t already have an optimized Facebook page and LinkedIn profile, forget about Google+ for now. Focus on the basics first, where there is a lot more traffic - and, therefore, more leads available. Better to have a strong presence on one or two strong social networks versus a skeleton on ten of them.

• Google+ is still in beta. Yes, there are 20 million users already, but one could argue that even Gmail was listed as being in beta for years after it was truly widespread. However, there are many things you will need to generate leads that just aren’t baked into Google+ yet, at Google’s own admission.

• The name of the game is traffic. That means advertising for most of us, unless we have built such a strong web presence that we dominate in local search results. Google+ results will show automatically in Google AdWords. Thus, you don’t need to do anything, except perhaps click on the + link to help your ad clickthrough rate, should your friends with Google accounts see it.- Don’t install the Google+ button on your website yet. Should you see traction on household names, then go for it. Doing it now just yields confusion - too many buttons can encourage users to ignore all of them. Yes, we have the +1 button on our websites, but that’s just so we can test it out and write articles for you guys. Our job is to try everything out and recommend what works.

• Yes, Google Analytics now automatically reports how many people are clicking on the +1 buttons.

You're a business professional with limited time and technical resources. Practically speaking, you can't follow every new technology, gadget, or social network out there. So let's consider what Google+ is and how you can benefit.


Chapter 5: Google+ And The +1 Button... Should You Care?



• Yes, it is another social network, not a search engine. You’ll have to decide how much more time you’ll have to maintain another social network.

• Google+ is quite similar to the Facebook of 3 years ago, and they are making the same mistakes. One of them is core to the platform and is called Circles. Anyone who is part of your network you have to add to a Circle, which is akin to a Facebook list. What Facebook learned a few years ago is that categorizing your friends into lists is a pain in the rear and that few people do it. A list doesn’t allow for nuances. What if someone is a golf buddy, a co-worker, and a church friend — what Circle should you add them to? What if things change? Facebook learned that engineers enjoyed lists, but the Average Joe does not. Google, being engineer-heavy, continues to make product decisions based on what engineers would like.

• Google+ is like Twitter in the sense that friendship is not mutual. You can “follow” someone with - out them needing to follow you back. On Facebook, friendship must be mutual. But like Facebook, in Google+ you can have only 5,000 connections.- From a business perspective: are people using Google+ to research financial services generate leads? We don’t see any strong examples. (If you do, please let me know.) The conversation on Google+ appears mostly to be about Google+ itself and whether people think it will succeed or not. Certainly, this article adds to that.

• You can do a live video chat via Hangouts; probably a cool feature among friends who would otherwise Skype with each other or use Google Video Chat. But I don’t see someone who is looking to refinance their house wanting to get on video chat with a mortgage broker unless they are comfortable with that person and have met them in real life.

Now let's spend some time on the social network aspects of Google+




If you have over 500 friends, followers, and connections (respective on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn), then let's talk about what you should do on Google+

Google+ is for connecting with people you know. Almost by definition, a new homeowner lead is not someone who is already a friend of yours. Thus, this social network is for connecting with existing friends — to enhance your relationship—not to generate new leads. Who are those people you see in real life on a regular basis? Maybe you have networking associates or know members of the Chamber of Commerce, Rotary Club, and so forth. Connect with them on Google+ to deepen those relationships.

You are probably already connected to them on LinkedIn, so you’ll have to painstakingly go through LinkedIn to invite these colleagues. Now you see why anyone who is not already strong in other networks should not be on Google+. It’s a weak secondary business network that isn’t about to displace LinkedIn anytime soon.

Start following (adding to your Circles) folks who are prominent in your industry, town, and client base. This is less about wanting to follow what’s going on or what they’re saying, and more about showing up in their notifications so that they’ll add you back.

This social network is so new that getting added to a Circle is novel enough that people will notice. Eventually, users will tire of it and turn off email notifications. It took me a while to figure out how to turn off this setting, which is pre-checked for us.

Google’s secret weapon for the social network is that it’s installed this black bar across all of your Google services — so you’ll mainly notice it in your Gmail.

If you add people, I would stick to just two circles—“friends” (real ones) and everyone else. Some people go crazy and create dozens of circles — compulsive list makers; you know who you are. The trouble with this is that the more lists you have, the harder it becomes to maintain. Plus (pun intended), when you’re sharing content, you have to choose which circles to share it with. Now you see why Circles are a pain in the rear —you have to manage your circles every time when adding friends and when sharing content.

If you are a social networking junkie and have thousands of friends and plenty of time, embark on a mission to add as many friends as you can and click +1 on everything they do. You’ll be able to boost existing relationships, but likely won’t generate any new business.

If you have other Google services, know that you don’t have to do anything to take advantage of some cool new features—Google+ stats are automatically incorporated into Google Analytics, +1 button results are added to Google AdWords, and the black status bar is added into your Gmail.

The Verdict?




Chapter 6: Further Promotion

Any time you have something honestly worthy of mention, it’s time to submit via the free press release sites. The trick to press releases is not to sound overly self-promotional with high - falutin’ sales language, but to provide factual specifics about what just happened and why it’s noteworthy. If you can include a quote from one of your respected friends in the niche (gathered from your social media efforts followed above), that gives you credibility. Treat it like a news story, but from a slightly favorable angle.

This process will take you 20 minutes to run through once you’re efficient - perhaps a lot longer the first time around. You can shortcut the process by using automated tools and services (often not as effective because of captchas and posting to the wrong sites — but search for “free press release services”). Or you can hire someone — pay the $10 per submission that they run through the process below.

Press Releases

List of Free Press Release Sites:

•free-press-release.com•prlog.com•i-newswire.com•prurgent.com•pr.com•24-7pressrelease.com (NOTE: Submit only one per day, or they will ban you!)•pressmethod.com•pr-inside.com•bignews.biz


http://free-press-release.com

http://prlog.com

http://i-newswire.com

http://prurgent.com

http://pr.com

http://24-7pressrelease.com

http://pressmethod.com

http://pr-inside.com

http://bignews.biz



CONCLUSION: Don't be afraid to toot your horn, but have it sound like someone else is doing it and that it sounds objective.

1. First, make sure you have accounts on each PR website listed above, and assign a forwarded email to it - for example: Shoemoney will get [email protected] Then forward all email on that account to your master inbox.

2. Open your press release in an editor, and split it up into defined sections (Title, Summary, Body, Closing Words, Tags, and Contact information). It’s good to write 2 or 3 variations of the same story, since search engines hate duplicate content.

3. Open all of the press release websites in new tabs, and usually start by submitting to Free-Press-Release.com, they’re highest ranked, and publish the quickest.

4. Copy all the info into their respective fields, and enter the CAPTCHA security text. Submit, and go to the next tab, rinse and repeat. (Some websites will give you the permalink immediately, while others simply say ‘We’ll review it’. It’s good practice to ‘roll’ out your press releases in different intervals, and most websites have a ‘publish at’ time - Try to spread out publications over a 3 day period.) After submitting to each website, make sure you update your spreadsheet with the permalinks that you were given, or just mark them as ‘Pending’. Keep track of everything you do, so it’s easy to remember what you’ve written about.

5. Once you have the URL, add it to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl (This step isn’t crucial, but gives you peace of mind that Google will review it.)

6. Check every day to make sure the press releases have been published, or if they were vrejected. If they were turned down, don’t worry - most websites will tell you why and let you resubmit after you’ve made the appropriate edits. You can see the status of your releases on the control panel of every website.

1. Create a folder named Press Release Sites. Use Firefox 3.0, and massbookmarking (CTRL+SHIFT+D on Windows). Then, you can recall each one by going to Bookmarks, then the folder you put them in, and hitting ‘Open all in tabs’. Next, go to docs.google.com, and make a new spreadsheet. This is handy for tracking the status of your releases and sharing your progress with others.

2. Place the PR site URLs along the top, and use the first column to write down the title of your press release. You can store the master copies of these in docs.google.com as well, so you’ll always have them, and others can view/edit them. When submitting press releases, do the following:


http://www.google.com/addurl



Chapter 7: Advanced Analytics

Too often analytics packages are glorified report creation tools. No matter how many reports you create, can you answer these questions?

• How are my different marketing channels performing relative to one another - and where am I bleeding?• What is the right amount of effort and spend to place on PPC, email marketing, SEO, offline campaigns,

and social media?• How much provable profit, ROI, and margin are being generated by each of my marketing campaigns?• Based on the data, what are the top 10 specific things that my organization can do to improve these

metrics?

Most organizations suffer from accumulated report overload - the hope is that more data, reports, tools, and software will somehow result in better performance. And these fancy software packages, while they produce an impressive array of pretty reports still don’t answer the questions posed above.

Enterprise Analytics:How Is Your Marketing Really Performing?

Your analytics platform SHOULD be intelligent enough to dig through the data and surface the specific metrics that have changed the most recently, provide you with possible explanations why, and then suggest recommendations on what you can do about it.

Your analytics SHOULDN’T force you to dig through a mountain of numbers to determine what the trends are, what is important versus can be safely ignored, and which of the many actions you can take will generate the highest ROI.




If this is what your staff spends most of their time doing, you have people doing functions that can be automated. Consider that a system when fed rules can easily:

• Highlight changes in major metrics With green (positive) and red (negative) trending, so you can focus on what’s important. Example: Site revenue is up 28% because PPC budgets are up 9% and average order value is up 21%.

• Readily surface alerts in underlying data Automatically drill down by marketing channel, time period, or keyword and identify causes. You can identify the thresholds to trigger alerts - with high sensitivity triggering many alerts. Example: alerts that the new landing pages are significantly better than the control by 12.3%

• Based on these alerts, provide suggestions or even take action automatically Decide when you want to review and in what cases you are comfortable with the system taking action. EXAMPLE: PPC bid management to reduce bids on unprofitable keywords.

The tyranny of reporting is that averages lie.




Important trends will wash each other out — in this example, revenue may be slightly up because the increase in new customer revenue outweighs the significant churn problems. If you just looked at dashboard reports alone, the churn issue would be hidden. Slice it another way and perhaps there is a different story — let’s now look at margin, instead of revenue.

Turns out that the new customers brought in are of lower margin, perhaps because of aggressive discounting programs — and that the churn is largely from higher margin customers. Net result is that overall margins are down, even though gross revenue is up. Now that we’ve pinpointed a potential cause of margins being down, how do we act on this? Let’s set up a WinBack program to target the churned customers - to have our outbound call center contact the highest margin customers directly, while sending the lower value churned customers a postcard or email.

Drilling down on a series of metrics to determine underlying root cause, then being able to take action. This model of actionable insights can apply in other areas of your business:

• Certain content on your site is more popular than others Start from what articles are the most popular, drill into which ones generate the most conversions (which is not the same as what gets the most traffic), send alerts to your staff to write more articles on these topics.

• Your organic traffic from Google search is decreasingStart from what keywords are driving the most visitors, drill into how our average position on certain keywords has fallen, send actions to your staff to build more inbound links to get past competitors.

• Based on these alerts, provide suggestions or even take action automatically Decide when you want to review and in what cases you are comfortable with the system taking action. Example: PPC bid management to reduce bids on unprofitable keywords.

Metric Decomposition

These examples show how marketing is a methodical, measurable science - you can pinpoint changes in your business and take action. How much of your marketing analytics is report generation versus leveraging smart rules to have the system grind through the data, then have your people evaluate the output and take action?

CPA - Cost Per Acquisition

CPC - Cost Per Click

CR - Conversion Rate

CTR - Click Through Rate

CPM - Cost Per 1,000 Impressions

CPA

CPC

CPC

CR

CR

INFLUENCED BYBids / Keywords /Ads / Targeting

INFLUENCED BYOffers /

Landing Pages




Metrics Analysis Action

If you just looked at dashboard reports alone, the churn issue would be hidden. Slice it another way and perhaps there is a different story.

• METRICS Starting from your most important metrics, clearly display trending. We place your metrics in context to be more meaningful - cost per acquisition is counter-balanced by number of conversions, click through rate is balanced by average position, conversion rate is balanced by cost per click, and so forth. With balancing metrics, we can avoid making a decision that helps us in one area while accidentally hurting us in another.

• ANALYSISBy systematically choosing pairs of derived metrics in the pyramid, RunMetrics drills down into the root causes of WHY a metric may have changed. Know not just that revenue per customer is up, but understand the underlying reasons why - a different campaign mix, the addition of a large customer that swings the average, seasonality, a large email blast, and so forth. Avoid the lie of averages. Set up alerts to spot problems early, before they get out of control.

• ACTION Now that you know why a particular metric has changed, take one of multiple recommended actions to correct a problem. You can set up your own expert system rules. Plus, conduct experiments on landing pages, navigation, pricing models, and so forth. This is closed loop marketing.

The RunMetrics system cycles through a set of smart default rules to determine when something has changed and which ones will have the greatest effect on overall margins. In addition to the defaults, you can specify particular areas to monitor and special rules to generate alerts. Thus, the system will optimize to your organization’s goals — not just some cookie cutter set of metrics.

Action Framework




If you rely upon last click attribution, where the last click gets all the credit for a conversion, then you are likely penalizing the “assist”. For example, if you are a national retailer of home furnishings, your shoppers may search on “living room furniture” to visit your site and come back later to buy when they search on your brand name. If you use last click attribution, then “living room furniture” received no credit. The more considered the purchase, the more time and research is in the conversion funnel - and the more important it is to give credit to an assist.

You may by accidentally throwing out great traffic, while overpaying for other types of traffic that happens to occur at the end of the buy cycle.

Your Marketing Channels Work In Concert: Uncover How!

We Have 8 Conversion & Clickstream Visualization Tools

1. How many click events in each user’s clickstream (shown as a simple distribution/histogram), filtered by channel (all, PPC only, SEO only, email only).

2. Channel influence grid table (based on quality of referred data): What percentage of events have at least one PPC click, average number of PPC clicks per user, average number of days between PPC click and event-- then one row per channel (so this is a table with one record per channel and a grand total). Drop down for event (all, event a, event b... event x). This tells us when each channel participates in the funnel.

3. Channel influence overlap bars (based on quality of referred data): We could also show 4 horizontal bars (one each for PPC, SEO, email, direct), the left endpoint of each bar being the 25th percentile for date of that channel’s click and the right end being the 75th percentile. Like graph above, we can see the midpoint-- but now we add a sense of distribution of how spread early and late in the funnel. Drop down for events.

4. How many days between first visit and conversion event (shown as distribution/histogram), filtered by cohort (what month they joined or all time-- cohort is like wine vintage).

5. Funnel time between two events: For example, we could look at time in funnel between date of first data sheet download and ordering a sample. X-axis is the month they downloaded the data sheet and height of column is number of days between the two events. Thus, user must select two events (of which one is the x-axis) and then a time frame to filter.

6. Conversion event comparison: Show all events in a grid table - how many conversions, funnel length (days from first click to conversion), how many visits (count of sessions), PPC coverage (percentage of conversions that have at least one PPC click in user clickstream), SEO coverage (same thing), email coverage, direct coverage. Drop down for timeframe (all time, this month, last month). Column headers sortable.

7. Event recommendation overlap: Determine how likely any combination of two events go together. Select from 2 to N events out of a list. Then the system generates a cross-tab report showing how many users have bought both A and B. This is just like the tables you see with driving distances between two cities, where there is a table of N rows and N columns - and the table is chopped at the diagonal (since pairing A and B is the same as B and A). The higher the number, the more intense the shaded color of the cell, to provide emphasis. N is limited to 10. Date filter of all time, this month, last month. Omniture doesn’t allow us to categorize pages into custom — defined hierarchies or to perform attribution and funnel analysis, so we’ll be rolling up the data on our own.




Chapter 8: Why Your Social Analytics is Meaningless

If I came up to you and told you that I scored 350,000 points in some video game, what would you think? You’d probably ask me what the high score was and how that compares against most players. If the top score was 360,000, then in context, I did well. But if most scores are in the hundreds of millions - witness the inflation of pinball machine scores over time — then perhaps not.

Likewise, in social media, people talk about how many fans they have. Unless there is context, you have no basis of comparison. The same applies to any other metric such as the CTR (click-through rate) of your Facebook ads, the percentage of your fans that are active, the number of comments or likes you get on a post, how often folks share your content, and what your e-commerce conversion rate is on your website.

There are internal benchmarks to consider as well. If you’re in charge of social media for a national retail chain, can you answer the following questions?

• Do you know on average how many people are allocated towards social media?

• What’s the average social budget as a percentage of total marketing dollars?

• What metrics are being used to measure success?

• How does this measure up next to other marketing functions?

• Who should the head of social report into and what should be their responsibilities as it relates to customer care, the website folks, the SEO group, email marketing team, and so forth?




Social Analytics Is About Context

Traditional web analytics has always been about just your site — your traffic, which focused on number of hits, inbound referrals, conversion rates, and all kinds of activities that occur just in your patch of land. But the majority of social interactions occur in public — on ground that is not exclusively yours.

A user’s news feed is a shared space where friends, brands, events, and other objects interact. You don’t own them, you can’t easily tag them, and you can’t barge into the conversation and force them to hang out only at your place so you can cookie them.

Don’t be “that guy” who has poor social etiquette. Brand marketers are like bums with cardboard signs that walk into strangers’ houses pushing their products and asking for money. If you are reporting on your social channels just like your paid search channels, odds are this is you.

Paid search assumes that people are ready to buy — they had to initiate a search to demonstrate intent. In social, there is no such thing. What gets measured gets managed. Or another way to say it is, “if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. Here are the primary archetypes we see in social analytics:

The metrics in social should be around share of voice, engagement levels , fan quality, influence, and the lift to other conversion channels.

Do you know what the averages are for Fortune 1000 companies or perhaps even competitors and partners within your own industry? You need benchmarks to know what a good job looks like, if for no other reason than to justify your existence — to get more budget, resources, or that promotion you deserve.

• The Eye Candy Connoisseur: The name of the game is pretty. Look at the beautiful charts, tag clouds, and lines that move up and to the right. These folks usually care about having their fan counts displayed on plasma TV’s outside the boardroom. Executive love it— numbers at a glance, especially if you’re looking good relative to your competitor. Yes, we build these and they serve a good purpose. Then again, ice cream in moderation is a good thing— you just can’t subsist on an ice cream only diet, though I’m sure some kids have tried.

• The Bean Counter: Usually the realm of the PPC person or someone in a direct marketing company. Pessimistic, believes in the cold hard truth of conversion rates calculated down to 8 decimal places. But what they often miss is the brand aspect. What is the pain that your product solves? What drives the passion of your most die-hard fans? How does word-of-mouth spread to create marketing disciples of your brand? Can you measure the top of the AIDA funnel, where customers learn about you and are influenced by your existing customers? Or are you standing at the checkout counter, counting only those people who are already lined up at the register?




Running Your Facebook Marketing Business



Example 1Hello Bevans,

Let us get going with your dashboard! We realize you are in a very competitive market place being a hotel locating service competing with travelocity.com, expedia.com, and Orbitz.com to list a few. If you can gain an edge on these companies in social you can gain an edge in the real world.

Just send me a couple of competitors of yours and we can get you started on your free trial of our dashboard.

Example 2Hello Tay,

I loved looking at all of Pookie & Tuney stuffed animals on your Facebook page, they are adorable! I think a lot of people would feel the same if they just knew about you guys. This is where our BlitzMetrics Dashboard can help you out. With our Dashboards you can track all of your social media data plus all of your competitors and use these numbers to compare, learn, and improve.

If you would like to know more just answer a couple of quick questions. Which pages would you like to monitor on your dashboard? We include Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube data for you, plus three of your competitor’s pages. To get started - Let me know what Facebook page are you monitoring and what three pages would you like to include for comparison?

Example 3Hello,

Thanks for reaching out! Room Key's Facebook page looks great. I'll be happy to set you up with a dashboard trial; I'll just need some quick info.

If you could respond with the URL of the Facebook page you would like to monitor, as well as three competitor pages for comparison, I'll get your dashboard built right away!

Have a good day!

1.1 Follow Up

Example 1Hello Avi,

Are you ready to get going with your dashboard? We love your idea of bringing the Jewish community together on a global scale and want to help you spread your word.

To get started - Just send me what Facebook page you want us to monitor and, if any, competitors pages you want to compare yourself with.

Responding to Leads

SECTION 1 - RESPONDING TO LEADS



Example 2Hi Bill,

I was just following up on a dashboard request you sent us a little while back, let’s get this thing going!(Personalize)

All I need to get started is a Facebook page of you or your clients page to monitor plus any competitors you want for comparison.

Example 3Hello Eli,

I was just following up on an email you sent us a little while back. Your photo and design company could prosper greatly in social media through our dashboards. You can compare your social media numbers with other companies in the industry and learn what is working and what is not then implement these principles.


Example 4 (software company)Hello (Insert),

I was just following up on an email you sent us a little while back. I took a look at your website and saw that you have a like button on the home page but only 340 likes. If we can get more traffic towards your page, especially struggling businesses needing better software, they will click the like button and grow your influence in social media.

There is many ways we could do this but do get you started off we want to build you a dashboard that can track all of your data and competitors data. With this data we can figure out where the kind of fans are for your industry and target them. We can do various other things with your dashboard as well.

If you would like to know more just answer a couple of quick questions.

Which pages would you like to monitor on your dashboard? We include Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube data for you, plus three of your competitor’s pages. To get started - Let me know what Facebook page are you monitoring and what three pages would you like to include for comparison?

Responding to Leads



Example 1Hello (insert),

What Facebook pages did you want to monitor on your dashboard? We offer a 1 month free trial of our dashboards showing your data in an easy-to-read format. This lets you look at your progress across a number of metrics on a 7-day or a month time period.

Once you confirm which Facebook page you want monitor and any competitors pages you want monitored for comparison I'll get started on your dashboard right away and send you a link to it.

Example 1

Hello Caroline,

Thank you for reaching out! I see that you are a student at the University of the Witwatersrand studying Media Studies. A dashboard would be great for you if you are studying social media and how to compare the numbers.


Example 1Hello (Insert),I took a look at The Zimmerman Agency, your website, Facebook, and Twitter. I love how interacting your website is, keep it up!

We would love to get a Dashboard made for you. Looks like you have some big clients (Aflac, Tobacco Free Florida), so would this Dashboard be for your clients or for The Zimmerman Agency?

We also offer agencies White Label dashboards, which puts the agencies name/logo/information into the dashboard. Our goal is to help the agency grow brand recognition and look good in the eyes of the clients! We offer a one month free trial with your Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter accounts linked, as well as up to 3 competitors.Data without insight and action is useless. So we’d like to show you how to extract value from our tool using your own data.

1.2 Not Knowing Info

1.3 Students

1.4 Agencies

Responding to Leads



This dashboard is a one month free trial. Once you experience the value of the dashboard, we would like to talk about how to add the customization and added value of the White Label dashboard.Let me know what pages we can monitor for you and we'll get this dashboard built! Just respond YES with the pages and I'll get started.

Example 2Hello (Insert),

We do a lot of work with agencies and have done some work with Ogilvy (a huge agency); I actually just got done with some analysis for one their clients. The agents find our dashboards very helpful in showing their clients real data.

Just let me know what Facebook page you’re looking to monitor and some of their competitor’s pages. When I'm done I'll send you a link to your 1-month free trial dashboard!

Example 1Hi (insert),

Your data is populating! Now let's get you access to Insights data:

1. Make sure you're logged into the (insert) Facebook page as admin2. Follow this link: http://api1.blitzmetrics.com/socialanalytics/Account/FacebookAuthUI3. Click "Authorize"4. Follow this link: (Insert DB URL)5. Click the "Login with Facebook" button (might have to click twice).6. Accept the permissions, and you will be redirected back to the login screen7. Click "Request Access"

After you have completed the steps above let us know.

Example 2Hi (Insert),

Lets unlock your (Insert company name) dashboard. To get access to your Facebook Insights, we need a read only token:•LogintoFacebookasthe(Insertcompanyname)admin•Followthislink:http://api1.blitzmetrics.com/socialanalytics/Account/FacebookAuthUI•Click"Authorize"

For your dashboard access, follow these simple steps:•ClickthedashboardlinkwhileyouareloggedintoyourFacebookaccount(DBURL)•Click"loginwithFacebook"(mighthavetoclickacoupletimes)•Accepttheextendedapppermissions-youwillthenberedirectedtotheloginscreen•Click"RequestAccess"

Let me know when you've done this and we'll enable insights.

1.5 Requesting Insights

Responding to Leads



How Client Can Grant Us Facebook Fan Page Admin Access

1. Go to your Fan Page

2. Click on the "Manage" drop down menu at the top right and choose "Edit Page".

3. Select "Manage Admins" on the left panel.

4. Type in an email (i.e., [email protected] or [email protected])

5. Hit "Save Changes"

6. Done

Ad Accounts

SECTION 2 - AD ACCOUNTS



How to Establish New Facebook Ads Accounts

How to Grant Permission to Facebook User to Access Ad Account

1. In order to set up a new Facebook account, you will need to establish an e-mail address. Set up a yahoo e-mail account. This is fairly straightforward. It is not necessary to use your own name and/or birth date to set up the account. The user details of the account are unimportant. The login and password are the relevant pieces of information.

2. The next step is establishing a Facebook account. You can go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php and create a demo/dummy page, from whence you can establish your new account. You will be given a choice of category when creating a FB page. More often than not, this will be a “Brand or Product” page. Once you select the “Brand or Product” button, you will be prompted to choose a further sub-category. This selection is not important, since you will eventually be.

3. Deleting this created page, anyways. You should use the same login and password as the yahoo.com account for simplicity sake.

4. The next step will be granting admin access to the page in question. Visit the real fan page for which the account will be connected to and go to “edit page”. From here you can find the tab for admin access, where you can add your newly created account. Once admin is granted for the new account you can delete the dummy page you initially created to establish your account.

5. Once a new account has been set up for admin access, you must upload the username and password information to the appropriate project on Basecamp. You will need to find the project page on Basecamp > Writeboards > Access. In the Access tab you can add the login and password information you’re your new Facebook Ads Account.

6. Voila! You have successfully established a new Facebook Ads Account.

Note: You must be the administrator (or original creator) of the ad account in order to grant permission to other people. Thus, if your permission were under General User or Reports Only, then you wouldn’t be able to do so.

1. Go to http://www.facebook.com/ads/manage/accounts.php

2. Select the account name

3. On the left hand side, select “Settings” (see Figure 1.1)

4. Then you’ll need to re-enter your Facebook password

5. Under the “Permissions” section, click on “Add a User”

6. Type the name of a friend or an email address Note: If you are typing an email address, please make sure this person has a Facebook account that is already associated with that email address.

7. Done

Figure 1.1

Ad Accounts



Figure 1.2

How to Remove A User From Your Ad Account?

How to Grant Application Access To A Facebook User

Note: You must be the administrator (or original creator) of the ad account in order to grant permission to other people. Thus, if your permission were under General User or Reports Only, then you wouldn’t be able to do so.

1. http://www.facebook.com/ads/manage/

2. Click on “Settings”

3. Under Permissions, just click on the X to remove the particular user. (See Figure 1.2)

4. Done

1. Go to http://www.facebook.com/developers/

2. Click on the name of your application (e.g., Ireland Contest)

3. On the right hand side, click on Edit Settings

5. Scroll down all the way to the bottom until you see “Manage Users”

6. Go to “Add User” and type in [email protected]

7. Hit “Save Changes”

8. Make sure the user is selected as an administrator

9. Done!

4. Afterward, you will land on the Application backend. Select the "About" tab on the left hand side.

Ad Accounts

http://www.facebook.com/ads/manage/

http://www.facebook.com/developers/



We can target folks by job title and where they work, we just need to unlock how to approach each microtarget in a highly personalized way. This means the creation of hundreds if not thousands of ads.

We don’t want to just spend money or just drive fans. We want to make sure these fans turn into leads. To do that, we’d have to run a small test to map out this engagement flow. To have that success on Facebook is possible only when we can tie the traffic targets to the ads to the landing pages and to the deeper engagement. That thread must be traced all the way through a relationship. Certainly someone else can build a stand-alone app to do one thing or the other. If you have Waffl do an app, we can still drive traffic to that page, though we’d prefer that we do it because it will fit in our framework.

How To Drive More Leads From Scoring

First, we rank every Fortune 1000 company with a social score.

Then, we deliver the score to the people who work at the company via highly targeted Facebook ads.

Once they click on the ad, they’ll land on the scoring page, which displays their company’s social performance. They can download more information by putting in their email address. We capture their information and turn it into a lead.

How to Target B2B on Facebook

SECTION 3 - HOW TO TARGET B2B ON FACEBOOK



Facebook's Value

Fans Are Hardcore Facebook Users

Fans Are Customers Looking For Deals, News and Community

Fans• Who are they and what do they want?

Website Augmentation• Traffic• Amplification• Authentication

7 Quick Tips

1. Collect email addresses so you can add them to your mailing list.

2. When you have destination specials, run fan-only ads with the special.

3. Send non-fans to pages that have a reveal tab to unveil specials.

4. Use lateral targeting (related interests) to mine folks who would readily convert (top tier for other companies, related destinations).

5. Use retargeting to raise your conversion rates.

6. Like buttons on your site signal user preferences – remember them in your messaging (publishing to open graph items).

7. Do not abuse contests or discounts at risk of your brand reputation or permanent price erosion.

Facebook Marketing in Travel & Leisure Industry

SECTION 4 - FACEBOOK MARKETING IN THE TRAVEL & LEISURE INDUSTRY



Pages

And Gives You Fans to Target Ad Offers




Travel and E-Commerce Are Highly Social

Fans and Engagement Rate For Top 20 Hotels

There is a clear relationship between number of fans and engagement rate. As a page grows larger, it becomes harder to activate the same proportion of likes and comments versus the fan base. Also, the larger fan bases were often achieved via contests.


Ads Reach All Fans

Reaching Fans With Wall Posts, No Updates

• Paid delivery like email.• Deploying an app and

not notifying fans is like launching the landing page for an email campaign but never sending the email.



If you’re a local business or selling anything that is local — could even be flowers, doesn’t have to be something like what BlitzMetrics does - dentists, doctors, lawyers, roofers, massage therapists, then you want to show up in local search results, which is both organic search and map results. If you’re not local, which means that your niche is nationwide — skip ahead to the next section.

Here's What To Do:

1. The first step in this process is to open each page from the list below in separate tabs in Firefox (Recommended!) or whatever browser you might be using. I recommend Firefox is a handy plugin called Snaplinks, which allows you to open link en masse by dragging while right clicking: List of Local Directory Sites. To make this step easier in the future after opening the tabs save them as a bookmark (Ctrl + Shift + D in Firefox) this way you can recall them quickly like in the press release section.

2. Next step is to create a new e-mail address as a catch-all: Then create a forwarded email account such as [email protected]. This makes it easier to keep up with all the confirmation emails that will be sent in the registration process which is the next step.

3. You will need to open another tab with your new email address. A few of these sites will use your directory information as your registration.

4. After each site registration, go to your tab with your email opened and if need be, activate the confirmation link (If using Google you will need to contact the client you are listing beforehand to make them aware of a phone call confirmation or a post card containing a confirmation PIN).

5. If you have confirmed all the emails for user registration, then create your listing or profile on the sites. Enter in the appropriate information on the forms needed and if it has more options such as metatags or detailed info fill this is as best and as logical as possible.

6. After you have went through each site you will now need to keep up with where you listed these sites. You should add your sites/listing status and link in an excel document with site in one column of cells and your links/status in the next. Some of the sites will have an immediate link some will take up to 2 months to show up. If you do not have a link add that you have listed the info and it is pending.

Please Note: Some of these directories take up to 60 days for approval and most will take at minimum 2 weeks to show up in search queries so be patient if you do not see these immediately this is where having a single catch all email for your listings comes in handy since you can see updates for each listing, when you know the listings are approved add the link to your excel document to keep up with where the clients are listed.

SECTION 5 - MANAGING LOCAL ON FACEBOOK AND GOOGLE

Managing Local on Facebook and Google



Benefits

Hub and Spoke

• Ranking in local research results(in Facebook and in major engines like Google, who share data)

• Increasing your local presence(create consistency across your listings across other directories)

• Allowing your fans to check-in and share the experience with friends(not possible except with Facebook Place Pages)

Does your brand have but a single page on Facebook? If you don’t have one Facebook Place Page for each location you have, you’re missing out on local search traffic on not just Facebook, but traditional search, too. We will create a Facebook Place page for each of your locations and help claim them. With our dashboard, you’ll be able to centrally manage all of your pages and automatically tie each location into the overall brand. A Place page also allows your fans to check-in which isn’t possible with a single page for your brand. BlitzMetrics will optimize your Facebook listings to work in tandem with your Google listings, other directory listings, and the SEO of your website. Your brand can take advantage in claiming multiple placements in the new local search results pages.

Creating and Managing Facebook Pages

Kansas City, KS Chicago, IL

Boston, MA

New York City, NY

Washington D.C.

Atlanta, GA

Miami, FLPhoenix, AZ

Los Angeles, CA

San Jose, CA

San Francisco, CA

Portland, OR

Seattle, WA

Denver, CO

Dallas, TX

Central Branded Page




A primary optimized Facebook page has these elements:

Anatomy of a Facebook Page

Engagement Apps

Facebook Local Optimizations

Facebook Page Management

Make your page social with voting, couponing, gifting, YouTube videos, or other ways for them to share as your brand ambassadors.

We will select categories that align with your Google Place Page categories and make sure that your listings are consistent with Google and other directory listings, especially your name, address, and phone number. Citations quantity and quality are an important factor in local search, especially since Facebook pages are showing in regular search engine results pages.

• Page title (business name + city)• Address• Phone number• Other listings information

The more pages you have, the greater the management burden to monitor and manage. Consumers will complain, ask questions, or even post foul language. Our tools do the legwork for you so that you don’t have to check every single page in your portfolio every few minutes. We alert you when there’s an issue based on notification settings you configure.

• Page Monitoring: Automatically detect and remove inappropriate language and spam. Identify complaints and support requests. Set up custom word lists.

• Analytics: See an overall daily dashboard, as well as page-level statistics.

• Mass Posting and Updates: Systematically update all pages with content with a single click.

• Cross-Promotion: Tie all local pages into the central brand page automatically.

• Admin Control: Add or remove admins globally or at the page level with a single click.

CONCLUSION: If you're local, you have to deal with a separate local search algorithm and getting up into map results, so get listed!




Bonus Tip:

Build sites for high profile friends in exchange for links.This is almost cheating, it works so well. But it will only work once you’ve followed all of the previous steps in our guide. Once you have built up a blog that has 50 good posts, 20 - 30 guest posts on blogs that are at least PR4, 10-15 press releases, and 1,000 friends on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn — then you can reach out to the other folks who are powerful in your niche and offer to build them a site.

You see - by now, you already have an impressive site. It ranks well, looks good, is well followed, gets lots of traffic, has important people guest posting on it, and so forth. So other folks will ask you how you did it and perhaps if you can teach them.

To that you say, “Of course!” And in return, you suggest that you guys (or girls) exchange guest blog posts. You share what you’ve learned here with the Shoemoney Xtreme Internet Marketing Guides — as well as additional tips that you’ve learned along the way — and get them to link to you.

Most people who are experts in a niche (unless it’s blogging or internet marketing) don’t know about online marketing.

They might know a lot about baby’s dresses, the best holiday vacation in Australia, mountain bike parts, or skin rejuvenation creme - whatever the topic - so if they even have a site, it’s probably some crappy thing on blogger.com, typepad, livejournal or 37 other free blogging sites. So you offer to build their site for free in exchange for some favorable mentions and a link in the footer. You could even copy the site you already made and just pay someone $100 to re-skin the theme to their liking.

CONCLUSION: Practice the golden rule — do unto others before they do unto you. No, just kidding — that's the affiliate marketers rule. Seriously... do favors for important people so that they will speak kindly of your and link to you.




• The Disciple: She follows best practices and wants to adhere to the standards as put forward by her peers. Typically, this person is in IT or in a technology-heavy group. They may care more about collecting the data than actually doing anything with it, as has happened in the era of data warehousing and CRM. In all your data gathering, security protocols, and enforcement of standard tools for report access, make sure there aren’t so many roadblocks that marketing can’t get what they need to drive measurable ROI.

• Service Specialist: The customer is always right, except when they are not. He cares about managing the wall, since his previous background was managing the call center. To him, Facebook is a never-ending complaints board— a giant game of whack-a-mole played on a 1,000 by 1,000 grid. If Facebook and Twitter are merely an appendage of customer care, the conversation with your brand is about service failures as opposed to why people love your brand and how your brand makes them feel like a better person.

Any one of these roles in isolation is a caricature. But put together, like the combined viewpoints of the blind men touching the elephant, you have the right mix of strategy, brand, ROI, and customer care. Does your analytics do that? More than likely, your analytics is driven by one of these groups, which creates a lopsided view.

Do you know what the averages are for Fortune 1000 companies or perhaps even competitors and partners within your own industry? You need benchmarks to know what a good job looks like, if for no other reason than to justify your existence — to get more budget, resources, or that promotion you deserve.Back to what we said earlier— social analytics is valuable only in context. This may lead to a lot of questions:

• What context should you use— your competitors, how you did last month, or how other marketing channels performed?

• What if everyone in your industry is just getting going, such that there aren’t good examples to benchmark against?

• What if your brand is just starting on Facebook, so you don’t have history or a sufficient user base to even measure?

• What if you sell soap and shampoo— certainly your metrics are different than a software company.




Some questions clients often have:

How are we able to track from the ad down to the like?Facebook’s reporting allows us to track “actions”, which are also called “in-line conversions”—they are folks who clicked “like” from within the ad unit itself. There are also “conversions”, which are likes generated from both “actions” as well as from folks who clicked through on the ad and then became a fan of the page. Thirdly, we can track likes that came from “ads” as an overall bucket.

How will our ads interact with the video app (refer five friends)?We’d run ads to the app page (by specifying the destination url as such) or by sending to the page from the drop-down (where we have the video app as the default landing tab for non-fans). The latter is our preferred strategy, as it drives more fans. The ad unit itself will mention the bonus episode and may even have imagery/text that connotes they have to do something to get it —“want to unlock a bonus episode”, a still from the video that is partially blocked, or some other item we test.

The proposal states, “Fees will increase if creative development is necessary thought ad development (creative) would be included in the 20% management fee?It’s fair to assume that we would be creating the ads, with the client providing the art assets. We create numerous versions of an ad to test headline, body, offer, image, etc. That section is included in the proposal just as a standard clause for creative work that is beyond what’s normally necessary for ad management. For example, clients that want pure PPC will sometimes want landing page testing or site navigation improvements. In this case, we are counting on the client to provide us the base creatives, upon which we multiply out the variations.

Can we talk a little bit about targeting – who do we plan to target, based on what?As the goal is fans, a friend-of-fan targeting strategy is the base connection filer we use. That peer pressure is what will drive a high conversion rate. We’ll then layer on other filters for folks who like related TV shows, test a wide range of demographic combinations, and so forth. If we can get access to Sponsored Stories on this account, we can get a significant lift in fan conversions, thereby lowering our effective cost per fan.

Facebook FAQ's

SECTION 6 - FACEBOOK FAQ'S

6.1 Getting Started With Facebook Ads FAQ



Difference Between Actions and Conversions

Two ways to get fans using Facebook Ads:

1. In-line Likes

2. Clicking like on the page itself

Conversions Are The Sum of "Actions" and "Non In-Line Likes".

Facebook FAQ's



Will my tracking tag work on https pages?Yes, the same tracking tag can be used on http or https pages.

What kind of conversion information can I see in the Advertising Performance Report?In the Advertising Performance report, you can see two new columns for “Conversions” and “Conversion Rate.” The Conversions column lists the total number of conversions attributed to the impressions shown on a given date, and the Conversion Rate column shows the total number of conversions divided by the total number of impressions in basis points (1/10,000 ratio).

In this report, “Conversions” include not just offsite conversions for tags that you’ve placed on your own conversion pages (which are tracked in the other conversion reports), but also other social conversion actions including: inline actions in the ad such as “liking” a Page or RSVPing to an event, view through actions such as “liking” a Page and RSVPing to an event, etc. Note that, as in the Conversions by Impression Time report, the Conversions and Conversion Rate numbers will increase over time as more conversions are attributed to a previously delivered impression. “Conversions” will generally be greater than the “Actions” number you’ll see in this report, since “Actions” only includes actions users took in an ad itself (inline RSVPs or Page Likes); in addition to those actions, “Conversions” will also include non-inline Page Likes and Event RSVPs (that happened after a user saw or clicked on an ad for that Page or Event), etc.

Note that if you’re running ads with inline actions, you’ll automatically see a “conversions” column in this report even if you don’t independently set up offsite conversion tags.

If a user sees multiple ads before converting, which ad gets credit for the conversion?If a converting user clicked on an ad associated with the tracking tag’s advertiser account, the conversion is attributed to the last ad the user clicked; if the converting user never clicked on an associated ad but simply saw one or more associated ads, the conversion is attributed to the most recent ad the user saw.

Can I use Facebook conversion tracking to track activity on my Facebook Page?If you’re running ads with Inline Actions (such as “Become a Fan”), we’ll automatically track how many people become a fan of your Page – you don’t even need to set up conversion tags. You can see how many people became fans of your Page by looking at your Advertising Performance report. For ads with inline actions such as “Become a fan”, the “Conversions” column will show all users who became fans, whether by clicking on the action in the ad itself or becoming a fan directly on the Page. The same is true of Event ads with inline RSVP actions – the “Conversions” column will show all users who RSVP’d “yes” or “maybe”. For more detail, take a look at the Conversions by Conversion Time and Conversions by Impression Time report. In those reports, specific conversion actions will be tracked in the “SKU” field - “rsvp_yes” and “rsvp_maybe” mean that a user RSVP’d yes and maybe, respectively, and “fan_page” means that a user became a fan of the Page. These conversions track actions that happened both inline and on the Event invite or Page itself. You can also place tracking tags on any Facebook Platform applications hosted on your Page the same way that you would place tracking tags on any websites.

Facebook FAQ's

6.2 Conversion Report FAQ



How do I read the “Conversions by Conversion Time” Report in Ads Manager?The Conversions by Conversion Time Report shows conversion data organized by the time of the conversion event. For example, if a conversion occurred on February 12, 2010 from an ad that was shown to a user on January 31, 2010, that conversion would show up under the “8-28 day” column on the 2/12/10 row. This report helps you understand the total conversions (organized by tracking tag ) generated by Facebook Ads for a particular date or date range. Conversions are listed in two categories: post-impression conversions are from users who have seen but not necessarily clicked on one of your ads; post-click conversions are from users who have clicked on one of your ads. If you specified a Coversion Value or SKU in your tracking tag, the report will also show average value of the conversion events triggered and offer SKU information.

How do I read the “Conversion by Impression Time” Report in Ads Manager?The “Conversions by Impression Time” report helps you understand the conversions generated by specific Facebook ads delivered during a particular date range. The report is organized by the time of the ad impression that motivated a conversion (the impression that the conversion was attributed to). For example, if a conversion occurred on February 12, 2010 from an ad that was seen by a user on January 31, 2010, that conversion would be listed under the “Post-Imp (8 - 28 day)” column on January 31, 2010. You can expect the numbers in the Conversions by Impression Time report to change over time as more conversions are attributed to ads already delivered. For instance, if a user clicked on an ad on February 1 and didn’t convert until February 9, that conversion would be reported in the Conversion by Impression Time report listed under the February 1 date, but wouldn’t show up in the report until February 10.

As in the “Conversions by Conversion Time” report, conversions are listed in two categories: post-impression conversions are from users who have seen but not necessarily clicked on one of your ads; post-click conversions are from users who have clicked on one of your ads. If you specified a Value or SKU in your tracking tag, the report will also show average value of the conversion events triggered and offer SKU information.

Should my reports show different conversion numbers for the same date in the “Conversions by Conversion Time” and “Conversions by Impression Time” reports?Yes, “Conversions by Conversion Time” and “Conversions by Impression Time” reports will likely not show the same number of conversions for any given day -- one report is listing conversions by the time of the conversion and the other is listing them by the time of the motivating impression.

Why do I see data in my reports for SKUs such as “like_page”?If you’re running engagement ads for your application or Page on Facebook, the SKU value tells you more about where users responded to your engagement ads.

“like_page” means the application or Page was liked organically on Facebook.com, not inline on the ad.“like_page_inline” means the application or Page was liked inline in the ad itself.“like_page_connect” means that the application or Page was liked from a source not on Facebook.com itself.

The SKU column also passes along any SKUs you’ve independently added to your offsite conversion tracking tag.

Facebook FAQ's



Are the reports up-to-date?Currently, conversion data will generally be available in reports the day after we receive the data. (If a conversion event is triggered on Saturday, on Sunday you’ll be able to view it in your Ads Manager Reports.)

Can I use tags or pixels from another provider that I’ve already put on my site for Facebook conversion tracking?

Using tags or pixels from another provider to use Facebook tracking isn’t currently supported or recommended. We recommend that you add the Facebook tracking tag directly to your conversion pages in order to use Facebook conversion tracking.

Additional Resources

Help: http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=conversion_tracking_help

Suggestions and Feedback: http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=conversion_tracking_feedback

Facebook FAQ's

http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=conversion_tracking_help

http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=conversion_tracking_feedback



What Does # of Actions for Page Post Story Refer To?

If you advertise a Page Post story, you’ll see actions within the Ads Manager as people can ‘like’ your Page when seeing these stories. This will also generate conversions within your Ads Manager reporting.

For example, if a person’s friends like your Page, in addition to seeing that news story in their News Feed, they can now also see the same story on the right-hand column on any Facebook page. Here’s how it works:

1. A person likes your Page, interacts with your App or checks-in to one of your Places.

2. Normally, a story about this activity is generated on their friends’ News Feeds, which their friends may or may not see due to the dynamic nature of News Feed.

3. By including Sponsored Stories along with your Facebook Ads campaign, this person’s friends may now also see the story surfaced in the right-hand column of their page where they are more likely to see it.

The Page story is only posted to people that are friends of your connections, and not people that are already connected to that Page. The Like story will only be seen by people that are already fans of your Page can see. Since these people are already fans, they will only be able to like the story rather than like the Page.

For further information concerning Sponsored Stories, please visit the Help Center at: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=18930

What are Insights?Facebook Insights provides Facebook Page owners and Facebook Platform developers with metrics around their content. By understanding and analyzing trends within user growth and demographics, consumption of content, and creation of content, Page owners and Platform developers are better equipped to improve their business with Facebook.

To see metrics on your Facebook Page or Platform application, go to the http://www.facebook.com/insights. Only Page administrators, application owners, and domain administrators can view Insights data for the properties they own or administer. To view comprehensive Insights on your specific Page, Platform application or website, click on the corresponding item on the left navigation bar.

Insights is a free service for all Facebook Pages and Facebook Platform application and websites. In addition to the Insights Dashboard, data is also available through the Graph API. To learn more about the Facebook Platform and Graph API, visit the http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=431 help pages.

How often are metrics updated?Data is aggregated on a daily basis and is made available within 24 hours after the full day is complete.

Facebook Sponsored Stories

Insights Help

Facebook FAQ's

6.3 Definitions

http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=18930




What is a “Fan”?“Fan” is a Facebook user that has made a connection with a Facebook Page. This is done either by clicking on the “Like” link at the top of a Facebook Page or from the news feed story generated by another user that has clicked “Like” for that Page.

What is an “active user”?Users are considered active if they have engaged with, viewed, or consumed content generated by your application or Facebook Page. The “Key Sources” displayed on the Insights Dashboard indicate how many users are considered active for each activity source.

If you have an Authorized Page, you are also able to see post analytics for stories you post from your Page. Users who are exposed to your posts in News Feed are considered active users.

What are possible sources for Fans, users, and internal page views?Here are a list of possible sources which will appear as source for Fans, Application users, and internal Page Views:

• Application Directory (located at http://www.facebook.com/apps/directory.php)• Applications Dashboard – Friends’ Applications (labeled section)• Applications Dashboard – Friends’ Recent Activity (labeled section• Applications Dashboard – Your Applications (labeled section)• Bookmark (Application bookmark)• Games Dashboard – Friends’ Games (labeled section)• Games Dashboard – Friends’ Recent Activity (labeled section)• Games Dashboard – Your Games (labeled section)• Stream (News Feed)• Suggestions (Facebook suggestions to users)• Requests (User to user suggestion)• Search (Facebook search bar at the top of the page)• Application Tab• Fan Page (Like button at top of fan page)• User Profile Page (Fan links from another users profile)• Fan Box (“Like Box” social plugin)• Ads (Facebook advertising)

What is an “active user”?Users are considered active if they have engaged with, viewed, or consumed content generated by your application or Facebook Page. The “Key Sources” displayed on the Insights Dashboard indicate how many users are considered active for each activity source.

Facebook FAQ's

http://www.facebook.com/apps/directory.php



What geographic and demographic data is available through Insights?The Insights Dashboard provides the ability to see geographic and demographic data for users that are Fans of your page. Location data is based on the geographic location of the user as determined by their browser IP address and is limited to at most the top 20 countries and cities. All other demographic information is aggregated and non-personally identifiable.

I am a Page administrator. Why am I not able to see Insights for my page?Insights are only available to Pages which are liked by at least 30 people. Insights will start showing up for your Page once your page has 30 users who like it.

Where is the Post Quality metric?Post Quality is no longer reported on the Insights Dashboard.

Page admins now have the ability to see information about their fan base and the fans who interact with their content. For privacy reasons, Facebook will not provide demographic data (such as age and gender) or geographic data ( such as country, city, and spoken language) unless there is a significant number of fans in each statistical category. To increase your number of fans and active fans, you may want to write on your Page’s Wall, post photos or videos to your Page, or create other content that your fans will find engaging.

An interaction occurs when a fan writes on your Wall, comments on your posts, or likes your content. The total of these actions aggregated over seven days is displayed in this section.

When you create compelling content, your fans may choose to interact with the material by commenting, liking, or writing on your Wall. These fans help to spread your content virally throughout Facebook, as their engagement leads to organic stories being published in their friends’ News Feed.

To increase the number of Interactions and improve your Post Quality you may consider:• Making sure that your posts, whether they are Status Updates, photos, links, or videos, are relevant to

your fans. Posting engaging content is the best way to get people to interact with your Page.• Posting frequently, but not posting an overwhelming amount of content that users may find spammy or

burdensome to consume.• Increasing your total fan base to generate more interactions.

New Page Insights: Fan Geographic and Demographic Data

New Page Insights: Interactions This Week

Facebook FAQ's



New Page Insights: Fan Dashboard Graph

New Page Insights: Fan Interaction Graphs

The fan dashboard graph shows trends in fan acquisition and News Feed content distribution:

• Total Fans / Unsubscribers: Total number of fans over time, overlaid with the total number of fans who have chosen to hide your posts in their News Feed (unsubscribe).

• New / Removed Fans: The number of people who have become a fan of your Page or stopped being a fan of your Page.

• Unsubscribes / Re-subscribes: Number of people who have chosen to hide your posts (unsubscribes) in their News Feed, compared to the number of people who have purposely undone that action (re-subscribes).

Page admins who post engaging, high quality content will have interactive fan bases capable of virally spreading content through the social graph. The Fan Interaction Graph shows how fans are engaging with your posts and consuming your material.

• Interactions: Total number of comments, Wall posts, and likes.

• Interactions Per Post: Average number of comments, Wall posts, and likes generated by each piece of content you post.

• Post Quality: Score measuring how engaging your content is to Facebook users. A higher Post Quality indicates material that better engages users.

• Posts: Number of posts your Page has made either on the Wall or in video.

• Page Views: Number of times your Page has been viewed by Facebook users.

• Stream CTR / ETR: This graph is a measure of the Click Through Rate and Engagement Rate for your content appearing in the Facebook News Feed. If a user clicks on one of your posts, that will be counted as Stream CTR. If a user likes or comments on one of your posts, that will be counted in the Stream ETR. Please note that Stream data is based on a sample and therefore is an estimate of your Stream CTR and ETR. (Coming soon)

• Media Consumption: This graph tracks how many photo views, audio plays, and video plays your content have received.

• Discussion Posts: Total number of discussion posts written by fans.

• Reviews: Number of times your Page has been rated in the Reviews application.

Facebook FAQ's



Figure 1.1

Figure 1.2

If you’re running ads with Inline Actions (such as “Become a Fan”), we’ll automatically track how many people become a fan of your Page – you don’t even need to set up conversion tags. Facebook Insights for Domains offers a consolidated view of key metrics for any website, even those that have not implemented the Facebook Platform. For example, if a user links to your site in their Facebook status message, that data is included in the analytics for your domain. You can access sharing metrics and demographic information per domain and per URL so you can optimize your content for sharing and better tailor your content to your audience.

Claiming a Domain

1. To see insights for you website, you must first claim your domain by associating it with a Facebook page or application that you manage, or with your Facebook user account.

2. To do this Click on the green “Insights for your Domain” link from the Insights Dashboard.

3. Type in your domain address into the text box and select the user, page or application account to link it with. If you need to provide access to a single user, then select user ID. If you need to provide access to multiple users, then you should create and select a Facebook Page or Application. All administrators of the Page or Application will have access to Insights for the site, and removing a user as an administrator of the page or application will revoke their access to the site’s Insights.

4. Now copy the meta tag (see Figure 1.1) provided in the window and add it to the root of your web page. Website owners must add a verification meta tag to the <head> section of the root webpage of a domain (see Figure 1.2). If your site utilizes subdomains, the root file of each subdomain must be claimed separately.

5. Finally click ‘Check Domain’. Once checked, your claimed domain will appear on the left side navigation bar under the “domains” section.

Reference:

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/insights/

Facebook FAQ's

6.4 Domain Insights

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/insights/



How to Become a Facebook Developer

How to Add Facebook Comments to a WordPress Blog

Do I need a new Facebook account to use for developing my app?No. In fact, you should use your current Facebook account to develop your app. According to section 4.1 of the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, users should not provide false information on Facebook. Once the app is created, a number of developers can and should be added to the app so that multiple developers can test and develop the app. Apps with fake developer accounts attached will be subject to enforcement action. Please see “Can I create test accounts to test my apps?” to learn more about creating test accounts

How do I verify my developer account?Facebook has several features in place to limit the potential for spam and abuse on the site. Verifying your Facebook account helps you retain control of your account and apps on Facebook. There are two ways to verify your account. First, you can verify your cell phone, which allows us to verify that a real person is in control of the account.

The second way to verify your account is to add a credit card to your account.

Unfortunately, if you cannot verify with a cell phone or add a credit card, you may be unable to verify your account. All developers must be verified before they can create a new app.

Resource: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=1096

Step 1:Log into http://www.facebook.com/developers/

Step 2:If you’ve never been here before, you may need to give permission to Facebook fill out a form answering a few basic questions. I’ve seen this part be buggy, so even if something goes wrong, just go back to http://www.facebook.com/developers/ again and everything will probably be fine.

Facebook FAQ's

6.5 Facebook How To's






Step 1:Click the "Set Up New Application" button in the upper right.

Step 4:Go to http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/comments/Enter in the URL of your blog’s homepage, the number of comments you want to show on each post, and the width you want the comments section to be. Then grab the code it gives you.

Step 5:Since your only option was to put in one URL, but you need the comments to be unique to each of your blog posts, you’ll now want to edit the code you were given. Notice that part of the code is this:href=”THE-URL-YOU-SUPPLIED”

You’ll want to change that URL to this: href=”<?php the_permalink(); ?>”

To summarize, replace the URL to your blog’s home page with <?php the_permalink(); ?> between the quotes, leaving all the rest of the code exactly as you were given it, so that it looks similar to this:<div id=”fb-root”></div><script src=”http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#appId=123456789101112&xfbml=1”></script><fb:comments href=”<?php the_permalink(); ?>” num_posts=”5” width=”450”></fb:comments>

Facebook FAQ's

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/comments/



Step 6:Now you need to place your entire chunk of code into you theme files, so go login to your WordPress dashboard, and go to Appearance > Editor. I like to place it in single.php just before the line that says:

<?php comments_template(); ?>(or it may say: <?php comments_template( ‘’, true ); ?>)

So just click on Single Post (single.php) in the files listed on the right, and paste the code into that file, then click the Update File button. (Note: You can also place it within your comments.php file. Where you put it is really up to you, but it’s usually easiest to place it in the single.php file just before it calls the comments_template.)

That should be all you need to do to get Facebook Comments up and running on your WordPress blog.

Procedures:

1. Go to http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/ and look for the “Get Like Button Code” section.

2. Put in the URL of the webpage where you want to put the like button on

3. Click on the “Get Code” button

4. Put the code between <body> </body> of your webpage source file

5. After the like button is installed, you’ll need to generate the open graph tags

6. Look for the “Get Open Graph Tags” section

7. Input the title, type, url, image, site, name, and admin ID (Facebook user ID)

8. Click on the “Get Tags” button

9. Paste the code between <head></head>.

10. Done!

How to Install Open Graph Tags on a Webpage

Purpose: When you click the “Like” button on a website, the content will visually appear on your Facebook wall (see image below).

Facebook FAQ's

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/



Example of The Source Code:

<html><head>//Open Graph Tags<meta property=”og:title” content=”Toilet Mug” /><meta property=”og:type” content=”product” /><meta property=”og:url” content=”http://jaseum.dc1.netfirms.com/stupid.html” /><meta property=”og:image” content=”http://www.stupid.com/mm5/graphics/00000001/toiletmug5.jpg” /><meta property=”og:site_name” content=”Jaseum.com” /><meta property=”fb:admins” content=”77001645” /></head>

<body>Testing Open Graph tag for Stupid.com//Like Button Code<iframe src=”http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like. php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fjaseum.dcl.netfirms.com%2Fstupid.html%amp;layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=450&action=like&font&colorscheme=light&height=80” scrolling=”no” framebor-der=”0” style=”border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:80px;” allowTransparency=”true”></iframe>

</body></html>

Facebook FAQ's



6.6 Facebook Page vs. Profile

IntroductionProvided here are two Facebook profiles to compare using our dashboards- One as the main entity, and the other as a competitor. They are completely unrelated, except for both having the word "thug" in their name.

https://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1282267697

https://www.facebook.com/#!/thugsy.mack

However, there is an issue, and it's a common misconception about Facebook and our software: These are both Facebook users, not pages. Our dashboard is designed for companies that want to grow their pub-lic page's presence. However, we can still get some information on users via the graph API here (go poke around, it's fascinating):

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/



What We know

As for both of these "thugs", here is what we do know:• ThugsyMack,theseconduser,apparentlyhashissettingssettothedefault,whichletsusseewhohisfriendsare and some basic information about him. This is the public default, meaning you don't have to be friends with him. Viewing his profile doesn't notify him that we've done so, unlike LinkedIn.

• He'salsochosenhisvanityurl--youcantellbecausehisprofileurldoesn'thaveabunchofnumbersattheend. Often, users will use the same screen name across all their networks, so that is a term you'll want to search Google for to see what else comes up. It's not always accurate, so you will have to match on other variables such as their picture, interests, and other information. People will move and set up new identities, so name and location won't always match.

• Wesee10profilephotosinhisprofile.Oftenuserswilltagtheirfriendsandyoucanoftenseeidentifyinginformation such as the license plate numbers of cars and street addresses. He's from Brooklyn, so it wouldn't be hard for a Brooklyn cop to recognize landmarks or even friends in the pictures.



• ThugsyandIdon'thaveanyfriendsincommon,whichistobeexpected.Butperhapsthepolicecanscanhis22 friends to see who is a known felon. It's incredible how often people will share their public connections, even if nefarious.

• Forthe"LatinThugsta",he'slockeddownhisprofileanddoesn'tevenhaveaphoto.Usually,youcangetauser in the graph API with their userid: https://graph.facebook.com/1282267697, but this guy turns up false. If you don't know their userid, then just go to graph.facebook.com/[their_userid] to get it.

Check this out, too, for further insight into using the graph API: http://www.blitzlocal.com/graph-hacking/ But HOW do you get this data?

Here's the process you can walk anyone through live-- with the last few steps requiring some sort of database system that collects this data for querying:1. Go to a page you want to analyze-- can be one you have admin on or don't. I like to use Lane Bryant, since we can demonstrate the power of real-time feedback. If you want to post on the Lane Bryant wall for a demo, just let me know beforehand and we'll coordinate. 2. Now go to the wall of that page, since a good brand knows to send non-fans to a welcome tab, not the wall. For example: https://www.facebook.com/ncrcorp?sk=wall 3. Facebook is just a big database of objects connected together-- users, posts, pages, comments, video (etc) connected together by actions. Making sure you're logged into Facebook, open another tab and go here: https://de-velopers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/ to discuss the "behind the scenes" of these objects. 4. Click on the pages example (which is Coca Cola) to show the graph view. Then replace "cocacola" with what-ever page-- "ncrcorp", for example, to show the objectid of that page.



5. In the second grouping of objects on the api overview, click on the "friends" link (it has access_token in it) to display all your friends and their objectids. They are ranked in order of seniority, evidenced by how low the number is. If you're well connected, you'll have a number of folks who are under 1,000. 6. Now replace "me/friends" with "pagename/posts" in the url, keeping everything else the same. So you might put in ncrcorp/posts, for example, and keep the long string following that. Now you can see all the posts for that page with the users who have interacted-- posted, liked, or commented. If you happened to have posted something live earlier, then you are seeing the live results of a few minutes ago. 7. Scroll through the list and choose someone who has commented or liked (I prefer commented, since these users tend to have more data). You'll see their objectid, so copy that and open a new tab with facebook.com/[objectid]. Then show what you know about this person, even though they're not a friend. If you don't have much info on them, since they may have adjusted their privacy settings, try another person or two from the graph output on postings. Note this is publicly available data-- you are not friends with these users or admin on the page. 8. Scroll to the bottom of the posts feed to show that you can recursively go back in time to get more data. Via an FQL call, you can actually grab a lot more data than shown this way-- plus you can systemati-cally pull data from any set of pages at a pre-defined frequency, if your engineers are so inclined. Real-time even. 9. Discuss what is possible with data structured this way-- to know which users are reacting to what type of content. When MSNBC posts about Occupy Wall Street vs. about Hurricane Katrina, they are activating different users. When they post at different times and different locations, they may attract different audiences, too-- older folks in the morning vs. unemployed people in the middle of the night. Grab check-ins, photos tagged of you (as the page), mentioned, and anything else. Then aggregate into who your top fans are, flag certain words (complaint words, for example), and even sentiment. 10. Now you need to go into our database to do data analysis, since Facebook doesn't provide a data mining interface. This is where it gets sexy-- and you can see all the people who live in Columbia, SC, or are male and like pizza, or how you compare vs. other credit unions, and so forth. Spend time in a dashboard such as https://blitzmetrics.com//dashboard/?account=shoes&page=industry2, where we have organized (grouped and tagged) 185 pages with about 180 million fans between them. We can look at all of Nike's fans across all their pages vs. Adidas-- or look at just the athletes who are Nike sponsored in Brazil. Many ways to visualize the data for media brands or those that have a large portfolio-- many locations, products, or countries. 11. If you have a SQL query tool (I like MySQL Workbench, which is free) or do it inside a web browser, We can provide a read-only login. We want you to do some SQL training before cutting you loose here, since we have over a hundred million records and don't want to do things like accidentally create an infinite join. 12. Once you've spent enough time scaring and wowing the audience, plus gotten them to think about the opportunities for market research, product improvements, and customer care response metrics, then go to the search box on facebook.com and type in "need money" or something else in quotes. For example, you could type in "moving to Atlanta" (make sure to include the quotes), then click on "public posts" in the left side. You'll see the users who are talking about moving to Boston. This is the closest you can get to the immediate "lead gen" nature of search.



What is the exact dashboard or dashboards that we get for this price? Can you give screenshots?

The default dashboard has various views for Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. We recommend the executive, industry2 (trend view), and HD (map) views. You get all of these standard views in your license. Give us a week or so and we'll configure it with your data so you can see.

We have some semi-custom views for Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Nielsen, Bluefin, Omniture, and others. Twitter charges us for access, which we pass along, but other networks don't have incremental fees — we just use your token or login.

The MSA refers to numbers of FB pages and Twitter accounts. Just to be clear, for the sake of estimating, we should assume up to 1000 FB pages and 500 Twitter accounts for year one.

Yes, that is not a problem. Be sure to include competitive portfolios that you would like to monitor as well, which could potentially push the number higher.

What does the hosting include – how much and what is archived and for how long?

The hosting includes complete storage of your data at the most granular data for all time. Some vendors push historical data to an archive, while we keep it live for you to access any time. If you would like a dump of your data or access to our API, we can configure that, too.

How are accounts added and removed? Can we do this ourselves easily?

Yes, when you login with admin permissions, you will see a list of all your users. You can approve, upgrade to admin, and delete other users.

Is there any limitation on seats, or can everyone in the company access the dashboards?

Additional seats are $159 per month per named user. Attractive volume discounts apply.

Common FAQ's

SECTION 7 - COMMON FAQ'S



What additional insights would the dashboard include if we give you insights authorization to our FB pages? Are you equipped to handle this or is everything just based on public data?

Our specialty is Facebook insights data, which gives you access to 300 more metrics to help you understand reach, impressions, negative feedback, country breakouts, post-level metrics, organic/paid/viral, and other breakouts.

If you don't grant insights data on certain pages, perhaps because of competitor pages or because we don't have it for other reasons, we still provide all public interactions on the page — posts, comments, likes, and comment likes. We store this at the user-level in the database permanently.

What is the standard rate for additional dashboards and customizations?

•Additionaldashboardsare$5kamontheachand$159peruser.

•Customizationisper-projectbasedontheprofessionalserviceslaborrequired.

As we build a greater inventory of standard dashboards, you get these as part of your dashboard license at no extra charge. We will offer a range of new visualizations in the next few months (live instagram, weathermap, replay) that you can customize for a small labor fee, usually design customization.

Is there a cost if we want to entirely remove the “earned media value” metrics (these are very problematic and individual brands can add them if they want but we shouldn’t be showing this)?

Removing the EMV values completely is only a few hours of labor. We just need to understand what metric we'd like to put in its place, if wanted.

How much would it cost to add YouTube accounts? Other social networks that you support (Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, etc.)?

Basic YouTube data is included in the basic license. There are no other data charges for networks except for twitter. We can estimate cost based on the level of sophistication you want — from simply adding a couple columns to an existing report to a new complex view.

Common FAQ's



While any SQL toolkit will work, we recommend using MySQL Workbench for running all queries. This toolkit is available for free from the MySQL project downloads page below:

http://www.mysql.com/downloads/workbench/

Alternatively, If MySQL Workbench does not work for you, We have provided a list of alternatives below: http://alternativeto.net/software/mysql-workbench/

MySQL Notes

SECTION 8 - MYSQL NOTES

http://www.mysql.com/downloads/workbench/

http://alternativeto.net/software/mysql-workbench/



BlitzMetrics Server Architecture

MySQL Notes



Portfolio HierarchyThe portfolio hierarchy of an account looks like this:

• Account – the dashboard account.

• Portfolios – one owned portfolio and optionally portfolios for competitors.

• Groups – one or more groups that logically divide entities within a given portfolio.

• Entities – each entity represents a real-world property such as a brand, product, haracter, etc and contains one object from each of one or more channels (FB, Twitter, Youtube, etc) associated with it.

• Channel-specific objects (FB pages, YouTube channels, Twitter handles, etc). The tables for each level contain the AccountID to allow for easier queries with fewer joins.

Working With Portfolio Data

Timeframes

You can use these tables to get screen names, display names, and other info about the channels. The tables above are accessible to clients via the vw_fbtrackedpages, vw_entitytwaccounts, vw_entityytaccounts, and vw_entityinstagramaccounts tables, which limit the data to items in the client’s own account. For example, this query gets the youtube and twitter names and screen names for each entity in your dashboard accounts: There are multiple types of timeframe specifications used throughout the social media data:

Timestamps: Individual interaction objects almost always have a timestamp specifying the exact time (in UTC) that they were created at. This field is usually called CreatedTime or CreatedDate. This includes data in tables such as fbposts, fbcomments, tweets, etc.

Dates: Daily metrics such as account history data (eg twaccthistory and ytprofilehistory), Facebook insights (fbinsights, fbpostinsights), and daily aggregates (eg agg_fbinteractions_noadmin) have a ForDate field that specifies the day the data was collected for, and stores only a date component with no time specified.

Partial date+times: Aggregates and metrics that are collected more than once per day will have a date+time value that specifies only the components of the date that are relevant for the time period the date represents. For example, if a metric is collected every hour, the date/time will have the year, month, day, and hour components, but the minute or second components will always be set to 0 (eg ‘2012-01-31 3:00:00’).

PeriodType: Some tables, such as Facebook page insights (fbinsights) and the Bitly clicks data in btclicksbytime, store totals or averages collected for varying time periods. For example, the “page_active_users” metric is collected as a monthly, weekly, and daily stat, and bitly clicks may be stored for each hour or each minute. In this case, PeriodType will specify the period that the aggregate/total is for, in the form of a numeric value that specifies the number of seconds in the given period (60 for minute, 3600 for hour, 86400 for day, etc). A ForDate or ForTime field will be present to specify the end date and/or time the data was collected for.

MySQL Notes



Each entity is represented by a row in the entities table (which the vw_entities view gives client-specific access to). Each row has fields for each of the main channels we support:

• FBPageID has the ID of the Facebook page (if any) associated with the entity.

• TWAccountID has the numeric ID of the Twitter account (if any) associated with the entity.

• YTProfileID has the username of the YouTube account (if any) associated with the entity.

• InstagramUserID has the numeric user ID of the Instagram account (if any) associated with the entity.

There is also an additional table for each channel type that provides additional information about each channel object (FB page, Youtube account, etc) in the account:

•EachFacebook page in a dashboard account has an entry in the fbtrackedpages table that has additional info about it.

•EachTwitter account in a dashboard account has an entry in the entitytwaccounts table that has additional info about it.

•EachYouTube account in a dashboard account has an entry in the entityytaccounts table that has additional info about it.

•EachInstagram account in a dashboard account has an entry in the entityinstagramaccounts table that has additional info about it.

You can use these tables to get screen names, display names, and other info about the channels. The tables above are accessible to clients via the vw_fbtrackedpages, vw_entitytwaccounts, vw_entityytaccounts, and vw_entityinstagramaccounts tables, which limit the data to items in the client’s own account. For example, this query gets the youtube and twitter names and screen names for each entity in your dashboard accounts:

select e.EntityID, e.Name as EntityName, yt.Name as YTName, yt.YTUserID as YTScreenName, tw.Name as TWName, tw.ScreenName as TWScreenNamefrom vw_entities e left outer join vw_entityytaccounts yt on yt.YTUserID=e.YTProfileID left outer join vw_entitytwaccounts tw on tw.ID=e.TWAccountID;

Bitly accounts are not linked to the portfolio hierarchy, but instead are linked directly to the dashboard accounts themselves. See the Bitly section under Channel-specific data.

Mapping Entities to Channel-Specific Data Objects

MySQL Notes



Facebook

Most of the data for Facebook revolves around public profile pages and interactions on them. All records in the interactions tables have the ID of the page that they belong to stored in the OwnerObjectID field.

Actual interactions such as posts comments, and likes are publicly accessible via the Facebook API and thus are not restricted within the database. Insights data and aggregates of insights data are private and thus clients must query them via the views that correspond to them — use vw_fbinsights to access the fbinsights table and vw_fbpostinsights to access the post fbpostinsights table, etc.

fbposts: Contains all posts collected for Facebook pages and other Facebook objects. OwnerObjectID refers to the page or other object that each post belongs to, and PostID is the post’s own ID.

fbcomments: Contains all comments collected for all posts on Facebook pages and other Facebook objects. OwnerObjectID refers to the page or other object that the parent post belongs to, PostID is ID of the post the comment belongs to, and CommentID is the comment’s ID. The full comment ID is the combination of the page ID, post ID, and comment ID.

fblikes: Contains all likes collected for all posts on Facebook pages and other Facebook objects. OwnerObjectID refers to the page or other object that the parent post belongs to, PostID is ID of the post the like belongs to, and FromID is the ID of the user this like is from (each user can of course only like a given post once). Facebook does not provide timestamps for likes, so this table contains the time that the parent post was created instead.

fbcommentlikes: The same as fblikes except for comments instead of for posts.

fbusers: Contains all Facebook users collected from interactions. UserID is the numeric user ID as reported by Facebook, and is the primary key.

fbinsights: Page-level insights metrics from the FB API (daily, weekly, montly/28-day, and lifetime stats). Metrics are typically about two days behind due to the FB API’s delays. Contains private data – access it via vw_fbinsights.

fbpostinsights: Post-level insights metrics from the FB API. All post-level insights are lifetime stats. Metrics are typically about two days behind due to the FB API’s delays. Contains private data – access it via vw_fbpostinsights.

fbpagehistory: contains fan counts and “people talking about this” values collected daily and stored by date. This table is new and does not have much data yet.

Low-Level Data

Insight / History Tables

MySQL Notes

8.1 Channel-Specific Data



agg_fbinteractions_noadmin: Contains aggregate values pertaining to Facebook interactions, calculated from individual public interaction data records – i.e. from actual collected posts, comments, and likes. Data is collected on a daily basis, and each record is for a specific page and day.

agg_fbactivities: Contains aggregate values for interactions and fans broken out by week and month – each record contains values over the current week and month and over the previous week and month. This data is collected from private insights data and is thus only available to clients via the vw_fbactivities view.

agg_fbactivities_by_day: Contains daily aggregate values for page posts, likes, comments, views, fan adds and removes, and fan counts. Values are calculated from insights, so they are only available to clients via the vw_agg_fbactivities_by_day view. This view is in the process of being expanded to include other metrics as well and will be renamed in the future.

Aggregate Tables

Account Tables

Low-Level Data

Twitter

The data stored for twitter revolves around tweets, the users who created them, and data about the tweet entities (hashtags, mentions, URLs, etc) that the tweets contain.

Gnip twitter data is stored in tables almost identical to the tables listed in the “low-level data” section, except that they are prefixed with “gnip” – e.g. “gniptweets” instead of “tweets”. The data collected directly from the twitter stream API is kept separate from the data collected from the Gnip stream API because Gnip forbids the public display of tweets collected through its API whereas twitter itself allows public display.

twtrackedkeywords: Specifies the keywords and hashtags to be tracked through the Twitter and Gnip stream APIs. This table is accessible to clients through the vw_twtrackedkeywords view.

twitterusers: Stores user info for users whose tweets are stored in the tweets table or who replied to or retweeted via tweets stored in the tweets table.

tweets: Stores all tweets that come from twitter, whether via the standard search API or the twitter stream API. The equivalent for Gnip data is gniptweets.

tweeturls: Lists all URLs referenced in the tweets that are contained in the tweets table. Url specifies the t.co URL as defined in the actual tweet, ExpandedUrl specifies the expanded (non-t.co) Url that the t.co Url refers to, and DisplayUrl specifies the version of the expanded Url that is displayed in the tweet. In spite of being called an “expanded url”, if a shortened link (say, bit.ly, post.ly, fb.me, etc) is used in the original tweet, ExpandedUrl will be the shortened URL that was originally used.

tweetmentions: Lists all user/account mentions contained in the tweets from the tweets table. This table contains the numeric user ID, screen name, and display name belonging to each user mention.

tweethashtags: Lists all hashtags contained in the tweets from the tweets table.

tweetmediarefs: Lists all media items contained in the tweets from the tweets table. Right now, photos are the only type of media item supported by twitter.

MySQL Notes



History Tables

Aggregate Tables

Low-Level Data

History Tables

twaccthistory: Contains account metric values collected daily and stored by day – follower count, favorite count, status count, and friend count.

agg_twrelationships_hourly–Contains an hourly count of twitter relationships for each tracked twitter user / account. Relationship counts are the total number of relationships from the beginning of the tracking period up to the date and hour the specific record is for.

ytusers: Contains info about all users who authored a video or comment contained in the DB’s youtube tables.

ytvideos: Stores data for all collected Youtube videos. The table’s primary key is VideoID, which is the hash ID for the video. The time of upload is specified in the UploadedTime field.

ytvideosources: Lists the different source data streams available for each video – each source for a given video may differ by size, format, and/or expression (full vs clip).

ytvideocategories: Lists category types and category terms available for each video.

ytvideothumbnails: Stores links for all thumbnail representations of each youtube video. Specifies the position and type of each thumbnail.

ytvideopermissions: Specifies the permissions for each video — whether commenting, rating, embedding, video responses, etc are allowed.

YouTube

ytprofilehistory: Contains YouTube account metric values collected daily and stored by day — profile view count, upload view count, subscriber count, etc.

ytvideohistory: Contains metric values for each tracked youtube video, collected daily and stored by day —view count, favorite count, rating info, etc.

MySQL Notes



Low-Level Data

Account Tables

instagramusers: Contains user account info for all user accounts and tracked in all portfolios and all users whose instagram comments and likes are stored in the DB. Each user ID is the numeric user ID specified by the instagram API.

instagrammedia: Stores all media items (photos etc) for all tracked instagram user accounts – including the filter applied to the media, comment and like count, and location (where available).

instagramcomments: Lists all comments for all tracked instagram media items.

instagramlikes: Lists all likes for all tracked instagram media items.

instagrammediacaptions: Stores all captions for all instagram media items. Each instagram media item may or may not have a single caption associated with it. The caption is handled separately from the media item itself and may have a different creation date as well, but each caption always belongs to a specific media item.

instagrammediaimages: Lists all thumbnail and full-size image links for each media item, along with the image or thumbnail’s specific dimensions.

instagrammediatags: Lists all tags applied to each instagram media item. Each tag ID is in lower case.

On Bitly, a hash is a short unique ID that identifies a full URL, shortened for a given Bitly account or across all of Bitly. This is what Bitly tracks clicks against, and what we use as a key in the database.

If you shortened the full URL "http://www.google.com", and it was shortened to "http://bit.ly/rNQf3D", "rNQf3D" would be the Bitly URL's hash within your Bitly account (i.e. a user hash). If you created a Bitly URL for "http://www.google.com" for a different Bitly-owned domain such as j.mp (i.e. http://j.mp/rNQf3D) the hash would stay the same for that shortened URL as well and would be tracked jointly.

Global hashes are used to track a specific URL across all of Bitly - so you can get the global hash for one of your account's local Bitly URLs and use it to get the sum of all clicks generated by all Bitly URLs (no matter what account they were generated by) that point to the same destination (i.e. full) URL.

Instagram

Bitly

btaccounts: Defines the Bitly login names that are linked with each dashboard account.Private data; accessible to clients through the vw_btaccounts view.

MySQL Notes



Low-Level Data

History Tables

btglobalhashes: Stores info on all global hashes tracked – links each global hash to the full URL it is associated with (a one-to-one mapping) via the LongUrl field.

btuserhashes: Stores info on all user hashes tracked, linked to the login name of the Bitly account that created them. Each user hash is mapped to the global hash it is associated with via the GlobalHash field.

btcustomnames: Maps each bitly custom link name to the global hash it represents.

btclicks: Tracks lifetime total click counts for hashes and Bitly accounts over time, based on the date (without time component).

btclicksbydate: Stores click counts by date for hashes and Bitly accounts. Each record represents the click count accumulated during the single day that ForDate specifies or the week that starts on the date ForDate specifies, etc. PeriodType specifies the period type the click count is for (represented by the number of seconds in that period) – 86400 for a single day, or 604800 for a week.

btclicksbysource: Stores click counts by hash/user, date, and country or referrer source. If SourceType is “country”, Source will be a two-character ISO country code, and if SourceType is “referrer”, Source will be the name or URL of the source, or “direct” for clicks with no referrer.

btclicksbytime: Tracks click counts for hashes over periods smaller than one day – currently only by minute, but later by hour.

MySQL Notes



Notes

Basic Definitions

Accounts

• This doc is a work in progress.

• For the purposes of this doc, “verbatim” means exactly as returned from facebook.

• Fields that are left out of the field list for a table are likely deprecated

• A portfolio contains all owned objects/properties tracked by a client (e.g. all pages for the client Nickelodeon) or all objects/properties tracked by that client for a single competitor (e.g. all Cartoon Network properties Nickelodeon is tracking OR all Disney properties Nickelodeon is tracking).

• A group is a logical grouping of entities. Each individual portfolio may have one or more groupings of entities within it, and each group only belongs to a single portfolio.

• A channel is a social media site such as Facebook, Twitter, or Google+.

• An entity represents a real-world property such as a brand, product, character etc, and has one object from each of one or more channels associated with it (for example, up to one FB page, up to one YouTube channel, up to one Twitter account, etc).

• To recap, each account contains one or more portfolios, each portfolio contains one or more groupings, each grouping contains one or more entities, and each entity contains a single object from each of one or more channels.

Each record in this table represents a dashboard account for a client.

• A group is a logical grouping of entities. Each individual portfolio may have one or more groupings of entities within it, and each group only belongs to a single portfolio.

• AccountID :int

• Name :varchar– the “friendly” name of the account

• Ready : bit – whether all entered data has been pulled for the page for the first time[new]

• Package :varchar – The feature package (basic, enterprise, etc) the account is primarily associated with

• ConfigName :varchar – The name of the custom config file for the account as applicable

• CreatedTime :datetime – The time the account was initially created at

• ReadyTime :datetime – The time data pulling was completed at for the first time [new]

• Partner :varchar – The partner the account was created through

• Active : bit

MySQL Notes

8.2 Social Media Data Schema



Portfolios

MarketGroups

Entities

Social media portfolios. Each client account has one owned portfolio (denoted by IsCompetitor=0) and one or more competitor/industry portfolios. For example a company like Nickelodeon would have their own portfolio with all their pages (like SpongeBob and Nick Jr) and several competitor portfolios such as Disney and Cartoon Network, with competitor pages/twitter accts/etc they want to track.

Each portfolio definition belongs to one and only one account.

• PortfolioID :int

• AccountID :int – The ID of the account this portfolio belongs to.

• Name :varchar – The account’s “friendly” name.

• IsCompetitor – Whether the portfolio is a competitor portfolio. Typically only one portfolio will be non-competitor (owned).

Each record in this table represents a logical grouping of entities. Each individual portfolio may have one or more groupings of entities within it, and each group only belongs to a single portfolio. Table will be renamed in the future to portfoliogroups.

• MarketGroupID :int

• Name :varchar – the group’s “friendly” name.

• CompetesWith: int – optionally references a single owned group a given competitor group directly competes with (for faceoffs).

• PortfolioID :int - the portfolio this group belongs to.

• AccountID :int – the account the group belongs to – although also accessible by joining on portfolios, it is present to aid lookups.

• EntityID :int

• Name :varchar – The entity’s “friendly” name.

• FBPageID :bigint – The Facebook page (if any) associated with this entity.

• YTProfileID :varchar - The Youtube profile (if any) associated with this entity.

• TWScreenName :varchar – The screenname of the twitter account (if any) associated with this entity — deprecated in favor of TWAccountID but maintained for now.

• GroupID :int – The group that this entity belongs to.

MySQL Notes



fbtrackedpages

entitytwaccounts

• AccountID :int – For lookup

• PortfolioID :int – For lookup

• ExternalID :int – Links the group with a group on an external site or application where applicable

• Domain :varchar – The domain (if any) associated with this entity.

• TWAccountID : The user ID of the twitter account (if any) associated with this entity.

Defines additional info about the Facebook pages contained within entities.

• AccountID :int – The ID of the account the page belongs to. Each page has a separate record in this table per-account.

• PageID :bigint – The page’s numeric Facebook ID.

• Name :varchar – The “friendly” name of the page, as pulled from FB.

• PortfolioID :int – For lookups

• MarketGroupID: int – For lookups

• CompetesWith :optionally references a single owned page a given competitor page directly competes with (for faceoffs).

• HasAdmin : bit – a cached value indicating whether the owner of the account this page record belongs to has admin rights on the page.

Defines additional info about the Twitter accounts contained within entities.

• AccountID :int -The ID of the client account the twitter account belongs to. Each twitter account has a separate record in this table per-client-account.

• UserID :bigint – The user ID of this twitter account.

• ScreenName :varchar – The (cached) screenname of this twitter account.

• Name :varchar – The full name of the twitter account.

• HasToken : bit – Whether the owner of the client account this record belongs to owns an access token for this twitter account.

• Active : bit

MySQL Notes



fbinsights

fbusers

Stores current and historical insights data for Facebook pages, applications, and other top-level Facebook objects.

• PageID :int – The page ID (or other object ID such as application ID) the record is for.

• Metric :varchar – The name of the metric the record is for – for example “page_fans” or “page_fans_country”.

• ValueKey :varchar – The metric subkey the record is for – for example, if a metric is broken down by country, this field will contain a country abbreviation, or if the metric is broken down by age range, this field will contain a specific age range. If the metric is not broken down into multiple values, this field will contain an empty string.

• PeriodType :int – The type of period this record is for. Some metrics can be collected for more than one time period (day, week, month/30-day period, 28-days, lifetime). Each time period is specified using the number of seconds contained in that period (e.g. 86400 represents the “day” time period since there are 86400 seconds in a day).

• ForDate : date – The day the record is for (no time component – only date).

• Value :int – The numeric metric value for the record.

• userid :bigint – facebook user id

• firstname :varchar

• lastname :varchar

• middlename :varchar

• name :varchar – user’s display name as per facebook

• profileurl :varchar – the user’s profile url, using their username if they have one

• gender :varchar – user’s gender, verbatim

• locale :varchar – verbatim locale code in the form “en_US”

• location :varchar – the user’s current location, verbatim

• city :varchar – the user’s current city, extracted from the Facebook-reported location

• region :varchar - the user’s current region (state, province, etc), extracted from the Facebook-reported location.

• hometownlocation :varchar

MySQL Notes



• hometowncity :varchar

• hometownregion :varchar

• language :varchar – the user’s ISO language code, extracted from the Facebook locale code.

• country :varchar – the user’s ISO country code, extracted from the Facebook locale code.

• profilepic_sq :varchar – the user’s small square profile pic.

• username :varchar

• populated : bit – Whether the row has been populated from Facebook’s user info. User IDs may be inserted into the table before the user info is retrieved for them.

• scraped : bit – Whether extended user data has been collected yet for the user.

• geocodeattempted :bit – Whether the geocoder has processed the user. Even if this flag is set, a position may not be stored if the geocoder was not able to resolve a position from the location reported by Facebook.

• lat :decimal – the user’s geographic latitude, if one has been able to be determined.

• lon : decimal – the user’s geographic latitude, if one has been able to be determined.

• datasourcetype :varchar – Where the user was originally pulled from – page feed, fan list, etc. This is just for our reference or for debugging.

• datasourceid :bigint – The ID of the resource (eg page) the user was pulled from.

• rowupdatedat :datetime – The time the row was last updated – useful when refreshing data.

• rowaddedat :datetime

fbposts

• postid :bigint – the id of this post – gotten from the second part of the id reported by PAGE/posts.

• ownerobjectid :bigint – the object (page or user) this post belongs to – gotten from the first part of the id reported by PAGE/posts.

• objectid :the id of the post if it is not a status – should be the same as postid but stored just in case.

• fromid :bigint – the id of the user or page that made the post.

• fromcategory :varchar – the category that the post is posted under.

• fromname :varchar – the name of the user or page that made the post, at the time the post was created.

MySQL Notes



• message :varchar – the post’s message.

• name : the name of the post – if any .

• description : the description of the post – if any.

• source : the source link of the post – if any.

• picture :varchar – a link to the picture displayed beside the post – can apply to video and link posts as well as photo posts.

• caption :varchar – the caption under the photo/video/etc.

• link :varchar – the link associated with the post – whether a page link, a link to a photo, a link to a video, etc.

• icon :varchar – the feed icon (tiny).

• type :varchar – the type of post – “photo”, “video”, “link”, “status”.

• privacydesc :varchar – the privacy marking on the post, verbatim – this will often hold the name of a country, and seems to be the key to filtering out posts meant for multiple countries. Assume that while for Adidas it seems to always be a single country, it may contain a comma-delimited list of countries or cities or regions.

• privacyvalue :varchar – the type of privacy setting – “EVERYONE” or “CUSTOM” seem to be most common.

• application :varchar – the application that posted the post, if any.

• createdtime :datetime – the time the post was created, in UTC.

• updatedtime :datetime – the time the post was updated, in UTC.

• totallikes :int – The total number of likes on the post are reported by /posts – this figure includes likes on the post’s comments.

fbpostcomments

• postid :bigint – the id of the post the comment belongs to – gotten from the second part of the id reported by PAGE/posts.

• ownerobjectid :bigint – the object (page or user) the comment’s parent post belongs to – gotten from the first part of the id reported by PAGE/posts.

• commented :bigint – the id of the comment – grabbed from the last segment of the id reported by facebook.

• fromid :bigint – the user or page id of the author of the comment.

• fromname :varchar - the name of the author of the comment - stored here for convenience.

• message :varchar – the text of the comment.

• createdtime : the time the comment was created.

• totallikes : the total number of likes the comment has received.

MySQL Notes



fblikes

twittersearchdefs

twittersearchresults

• ownerobjectid :bigint – the id of the post / status.

• postid :bigint - the id of the post that the like belongs to.

• fromid :bigint - the id of the page or user who liked the post.

• fromname :varchar – the name of the page or user who liked the post.

• postcreatedtime :datetime – The time the post that this like belongs to was created. Duplicated here to make it easier to query by timeframe without an extra join.

• fbcommentlikes (note: this table is currently not filled by our scraper).

• ownerobjectid :bigint – the id of the post / status the parent comment belongs to.

• commentid :bigint – the id of the comment that the like belongs to.

• fromid :bigint - the id of the page or user who liked the object.

• fromname :varchar– the name of the page or user who liked the comment

Defines twitter keyword searches (can be simple keywords, hashtags, mention searches, operator searches, etc) that return tweets as results.

• SearchDefID : int

• Name :varchar – The “friendly” name of the search definition.

• SearchQuery :varchar – The twitter keyword or query criteria for the search.

• AccountID :int – The ID of the client account the twitter search def belongs to.

Maps twitter searches to the results that were found through them. Each tweet may be found by more than one search and each search will of course return multiple results, so this defines the many-to-many relationship between the two.

MySQL Notes



Hashtags: Where hashtagID is the hashtag without the “#” (i.e. if the hashtag is #idol, hashtagID is “idol”) and tweetID is the ID of the tweet that used the hashtag (use an inner join to link gniptweethashtags and gniptweets).

User/account mentions always have entries in gniptweetmentions:

• Where userID is the numeric ID of the user mentioned.

• Screenname is the screen name of the user mentioned.

• TweetID is the ID of the tweet that used the hashtag (use an inner join to link gniptweetmentions and gniptweets).

• Mentions of keywords that are not hashtags or user mentions require you to use the “like” keyword to examine the tweet’s text — i.e. “where StatusText like "KEYWORD" where KEYWORD is the keyword you are looking for.

• Retweets of a user always have the retweeted user’s numeric ID

• In Retweeted UserID in the gniptweets table replies to a user always have the replied-to user’s numeric ID.

• In InReplyToUserID in the gniptweets table replies by a tracked user to another user always have the tracked user’s numeric ID.

• In AuthorID and InReplyToUserID being non-null.

• Replies by a tracked user to another user always have the tracked user’s numeric ID.

• In AuthorID and RetweetedUserID being non-null.

MySQL Notes

8.3 How to Get Tweets Pulled By Our Tracking



Get a page ID from its page name:http://graph.facebook.com/lanebryant

Users and interests for a page (ping Dennis first before running):select f.userid, u.name, group_concat(i.name), count(i.name) as interestcount, f.pageid from fbpagefans f inner join fbuserinterests i on i.userid=f.userid inner join fbusers u on u.userid=f.userid where pageid=55715345255 group by userid

All posts for a given page (page ID is LaneBryant from above):select * from fbposts where ownerobjectid=70070202017 and ownerobjectid=fromid;

Count of comments on a post that contain a word:select count(*) from fbcomments where postid=168030169948013 and message like ‘skirt’;(change the postid)Group all comments on a post by exact messageselect trim(message) as msg, count(*) as commentcount from fbcomments where postid=168030169948013 group by trim(message);

Fans sample size for page:select count(*) from fbpagefans f where f.pageid=70070202017;

Number of users within sample with a specific interest (exact name unless you use SQL’s “LIKE” keyword):select count(*) from fbpagefans f where f.PageID=70070202017 and exists(select * from fbuserinterests i where i.UserID=f.UserID and i.Name=‘Reading’);

MySQL Notes

8.4 Page Related Queries and Tricks



Average friend count for fans of a set of pages:select avg(FriendCount) from fbpagefans f inner join fbusers u on u.UserID=f.UserID where f.PageID in(70070202017) and u.FriendCount>0;

Average friend count for commenters on a given set of pages:select avg(friendcount) from fbcomments c inner join fbusers u on u.UserID=c.FromID where c.OwnerObjectID in(70070202017) and u.FriendCount>0;

Average friend count for users who like posts on a given set of pagesselect avg(friendcount) from fblikes c inner join fbusers u on u.UserID=c.FromID where c.OwnerObjectID(70070202017) and u.FriendCount>0;

Percentage of this week’s active users who engaged on a set of pages (uses a brand-new metric)select if(e.value=0,0,(e.value/a.value)*100) as PctActiveUsersEngaged from fbinsights e inner join fbinsights a on e.periodtype=a.periodtype and e.pageid=a.pageid and e.fordate=a.fordate where e.pageid=70070202017 and e.metric=‘page_engaged_users’ and a.metric=‘page_active_users’ and e.fordate=‘2011-10-05’ and e.periodtype=604800;

Engagement as defined by # of interactions (not # of users interacting) vs # of fansset @pStart=‘2011-09-30’;set @pEnd=‘2011-10-06 23:59:59’;

MySQL Notes



Top fans (not weighted):SELECT ui.likes+ui.comments+ui.commentlikes+ui.posts as total, ui.* FROM(SELECTfu.userid,name,(select count() from fblikes fl where fl.fromid=fu.userid and OwnerObjectID = 70070202017) as likes,(select count() from fbcomments fc where fc.fromid=fu.userid and OwnerObjec-tID = 70070202017) as comments,(select count() from fbcommentlikes fcl where fcl.fromid=fu.userid and Own-erObjectID = 70070202017) as commentlikes,(select count() from fbposts fp where fp.fromid=fu.userid and OwnerObjectID = 70070202017) as postsFROM fbusers fu inner join fbpagefans pf on pf.userid=fu.useridWHERE pf.pageid=70070202017) as uiORDER BY total DESCLIMIT 100;

Selecting by Genderselect gender,avg(friendcount),count(userid) from socialstats.fbusers group by gendergender,avg(friendcount),count(userid)NULL,339.3333,131,323.9192,21618female,271.5567,2306921male,321.5301,2441583select city,avg(friendcount),count(userid) from socialstats.fbusers group by city order by count(*) desc;select profileurl,avg(friendcount),count(userid) from socialstats.fbusers group by profileurl order by count(*) desc; select * from socialstats.busservices limit 30;

MySQL Notes

8.5 Fan-Related Queries



10 Hidden Reasons Why Companies Fail at Facebook Advertising

What good is having a million fans if your relationship with them is superficial? Online advertisers have thrown around figured between $2 and $100 as the value of a Facebook fan. The value of your own fan depends on your industry, what the value of a touch or conversion is, and how deeply you can engage them at each step. Here are some common errors in valuing Facebook fans and why:

1. Correlation Is Not Causation

Just because Facebook users spend more money than average users is like saying people in hospitals are more likely to die than those who aren’t. Early adopters of technology tend to be high income - it’s not by being on Facebook that causes them to be higher income. So consider when your growth on Facebook creates incremental sales or leads. You’ll need click-level data to be able to determine that. BlitzMetrics attribution can measure this for you.

2. Last Click Attribution

People use a variety of means to make a decision - word of mouth, TV ads, drive-by, Facebook, email marketing, and so forth. Certainly, Facebook drives partial awareness and may assist in conversions. Most marketers use something called ”last click attribution”, where only the last touch gets credit. If a user has been exposed to 5 marketing messages prior to a conversion, the last message gets 100% of the credit. Are you properly quantifying these cross-channel effects? You may be giving too much credit in some cases and none at all in others.

3. “That’s What They Said. ”

To say a Facebook fan is worth $3.60 across the board is about as silly as saying the average click on Google is $1.07 and measuring yourself against that. A B2B fan is worth more than a consumer fan-- plus, the brand may or may not being doing everything possible to unlock the potential value of the fan. Industry and profit margins in each industry matter immensely. You need to determine that value for your own company.

4. Keywords Are Not Interests

You have keywords on Google versus interests on Facebook. In the former, someone is actively searching for something and is expressing immediate intent. In the latter, you’re targeting WHO someone is, as opposed to WHEN they are going to buy. You’re likely hitting them weeks and months before they search, so your targeting and ad copy must be different. We’ve seen PPC companies attempt to peddle translation tools that convert search keywords into Facebook interests. You might as well make chicken salad out of chicken poop - not possible. In search, you know WHEN, but not WHO - in Facebook, you know WHO, but not when.

5. Ads Take Users Away From Facebook

Users who are on Facebook don’t appreciate being yanked out of their browsing experience. So don’t send them to your website - send them to your Facebook fan page. But that also required that you have a custom tab - a landing page that is just as specific as any PPC landing page, whether sending people to a particular product page, video testimonial, store locator, or whatever. And that does take a bit of engineering effort as they are few app makers that can build FBML apps. WebTrends just bought Transpond for that very reason.

Common Mistakes

SECTION 9 - COMMON MISTAKES



6. The Ad Copy Is Too Forward

Imagine you’re having a nice dinner with a friend. Then some loud salesman interrupts your meal to pitch his wares. You’ve never seen this guy before - he’s not a friend, and you aren’t exactly interested in buying his stuff right NOW, thought it’s something you might consider later. That’s what Facebook advertisers do today- they shout over the din of the other shouting advertisers, just as you see in the content networks. On Facebook, you don’t have to shout because you can microtarget and whisper quietly because.

7. There Isn’t Multi-Step Engagement

Because advertisers are trying to go from impression all the way through to the sale in the same visit (yes, it works in PPC because you can target bottom of funnel terms), they fail. Instead, have one set of ads designed only to get fans of the right target audience. Then another set of ads messaging just fans. Then another set of ads for friends of fans. You wouldn’t say the same thing to someone off the street versus a friend you’ve known for a while, now would you? In Facebook PPC, you can segment your messaging by their level of engagement with you. And no, this concept is not available in the mainstream PPC tools - those software companies are still trying to jam the round peg in the square hole.

8. They Aren’t Refreshing Ads Daily

In PPC you can make some ads and they can live a long time. We have ads that are years old that continue to build Quality Score. We just leave those campaigns as is - set it and forget it. In Facebook, ads burn out in days. In fact, the narrower the audience, the faster the burnout. Google ads don’t burn out because it’s a different set of users searching on the keyword each day. In Facebook, you’re hitting the same inventory over and over - especially since the average user spends 7 hours a week on Facebook and consumes dozen of pages. With no frequency capping on Facebook, you better keep your ad copy fresh - not just because you want to split test, but because you don’t want to burn out by wasting inventory on the same people over and over.

9. Their Analytics Is Sending You The Wrong Message

If you’re measuring conversion, odds are that it’s the unspoken last click attribution. In other words, the user may have come to your site multiple times via organic, paid search, email, social, or other sources - but only that last click (likely a branded Google click) got 100% of the credit. In paid search, there is the concept of the “assist” and the “view through conversion” to give credit to other touchpoints prior to conversion. In the world of multi-channel marketing, where consumers take in multiple inputs before making a decision, you have to measure how many Facebook visits (or even impressions) resulted in an eventual conversion later. Facebook does have a conversion tracking tool and Ads API - but it’s still too buggy for mainstream users.

10. They Are Going For Exposure

True, when you have a new page, you want to get a lot of fans. If you’re a media buyer, you might even be looking for raw CPMs. But a fan is not a fan. You need to measure what those fans are worth. And there is no one size fits all - you can’t just use the ClickZ figure of $3.65 per fan and multiply by the number of fans you have. You have to measure how many of your fans eventually converted and then calculate back to an average fan value. If 5% of your fans eventually buy something and that something is worth $100, then a fan is worth $5 with full attribution. If you find the overlap is 33% between channels on average (3 visits on average between all channels prior to conversion), then your fan is worth $5 divided by 3 - or $1.67.

There are no software packages that will save you from these pitfalls - you or someone in your organization must develop the targeting, ad copy, and landing tabs that reflect your unique selling proposition. In the same way that great traditional PPC has tight linkages between the keyword, ads, and landing page - on Facebook, you must have tight interests, ultra personal ad copy, and many interest-related landing tabs.

Common Mistakes



• Facebook’s Secret To Making Your Life Easy: Optimized CPM• 7 Unbelievably Cool Facebook Ad Tactics• Supercharging Facebook Fan ages with Ads and Applications • How We Got to 40,310 Facebook Fans in 4 Days• How A 13 Year Old Gained 16,000 Fans in 96 Hours• How To Steal Your Competitor’s Customers On Facebook• The Most Powerful Secret in Facebook Ads• How To Rank #1 In Facebook Search In 60 Seconds For Any Term• The Single Critical Factor for Successful Advertising on Facebook• 11 Killer Ways to Increase Your Facebook CTR• How to: Grow Your Facebook Page by 17% in 1 Week!• A Fatal Mistake in Facebook Marketing• Why Most Brands Are Inadvertently Wasting Money on Facebook• How to use Influence to Supercharge Your Facebook Presence• Beware of the Viral Like-Jacking Facebook Pages• Facebook Insights and 7 Deadly Sins to Avoid• The Price of A Facebook Fan• Killer Facebook Strategies for Publishers• 7 Deadly Mistakes People Make on Facebook• 7 Killer Facebook Advertising Tips from ASE09• Surprise! Moms Are Hardcore Gamers!• Facebook for Web Apps• How to Make 45k a Day Scamming Facebook Ads• Can You Really Trust Your Facebook Friends?• Making a Facebook Page? Avoid This Deadly Mistake• Dennis Yu Gives Facebook Optimization Tips for Hosting Companies• Evolve or Die : 2010 Local Ad Agency Fiscal Model• The Ultimate Local Ad Agency 2010 Fiscal Model?• Google Analytics vs. Omniture: Independent Analysis• Is SEO A SCAM?• SEO Value of Article Aggregation Sites• I Will Do A SEO Analysis of Your Site for FREE• How to Get The Most Out of A Conference• 8 Killer Tips on Getting The Most Out of A Conference• Going From Zero To Popularity - Real Examples• How to Get Customers and Make Money on Autopilot• WordPress for Non-Profits Webinar: Key Learnings• An Insider’s View on Local Lead Generation• How to Geo-Target PPC Campaigns for Local• SEO: 9 Tips for Optimizing a Non-Profit Site

Bonus Material

SECTION 10 - BONUS MATERIAL

http://allfacebook.com/dennis-yu-optimized-cpm-facebook_b103941

http://allfacebook.com/facebook-ads-sponsored-stories_b77529

http://blog.web2expo.com/2011/02/supercharging-facebook-fan-pages-with-ads-and-applications/

http://allfacebook.com/how-we-got-to-40310-facebook-fans-in-4-days_b15100

http://allfacebook.com/how-gained-fans_b16912

http://allfacebook.com/steal-customers-facebook_b16842

http://allfacebook.com/facebook-ads-secret_b15141

http://allfacebook.com/facebook-search-rank_b15265

http://allfacebook.com/successful-advertising-facebook_b15387

http://www.ppcsummit.com/newsletter/google-adwords/11-killer-ways-to-increase-your-facebook-ctr/

http://pauldunay.com/how-to-grow-your-facebook-page-by-17-in-1-week/

http://www.ppcsummit.com/newsletter/google-adwords/a-fatal-mistake-in-facebook-marketing/

http://www.ppcsummit.com/newsletter/facebook/why-most-brands-are-inadvertently-wasting-money-on-facebook/

http://www.facebook.com/notes/interactive-strategies-nj/how-to-use-influence-to-supercharge-your-facebook-presence/487826718442

http://allfacebook.com/beware-of-the-viral-like-jacking-facebook-pages_b19425

http://uk-ua.facebook.com/notes/readytalk/facebook-insights-and-7-deadly-sins-to-avoid/426837060481

http://www.emediavitals.com/content/price-facebook-fan

http://www.emediavitals.com/content/killer-facebook-strategies-publishers

http://www2.webmasterradio.fm/ceo-coach/2010/11/15/7-deadly-mistakes-people-make-on-facebook

http://blog.clickbooth.com/2009/08/13/7-killer-facebook-advertising-tips-from-ase09/

http://allfacebook.com/surprise-moms-are-hardcore-gamers_b8937

http://developers.facebook.com/html5/build/

http://www.aimclearblog.com/2010/01/14/how-to-make-45k-a-day-scamming-facebook-ads/

http://www.ericschechter.com/can-you-really-trust-your-facebook-friends/

http://www.sinotechblog.com.cn/index.php/component/content/article/48-direct-marketing/602-making-a-facebook-page-avoid-this-deadly-mistake

http://www.thehostingnews.com/dennis-yu-gives-facebook-optimization-tips-for-hosting-companies-1306.html

http://www.aimclearblog.com/2010/01/05/2010-local-ad-firm-model-changes/

http://www.aimclearblog.com/2010/01/06/the-ultimate-local-ad-agency-2010-fiscal-model/

http://www.aimclearblog.com/2010/05/26/blitzlocal%E2%80%99s-dennis-yu-on-google-analytics-vs-omniture/

http://www.irisemedia.com/blog/2010/11/09/is-seo-search-engine-optimization-a-scam.html

http://ultralightstartups.com/2010/question-seo-value-of-article-aggregation-sites/

http://www.dennis-yu.com/i-will-do-a-seo-analysis-of-your-site-for-free

http://www.inc.com/guides/2010/09/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-a-conference.html

http://www.johnchow.com/8-killer-tips-on-getting-the-most-out-of-a-conference/

http://www.johnchow.com/going-from-zero-to-popularity-real-examples/

http://www.readytalk.com/blog/demand-generation/how-to-get-customers-and-make-money-on-autopilot

http://www.readytalk.com/blog/demand-generation-2/wordpress-for-non-profits-ebinar-key-learnings

http://www.semsamurai.com/2009/07/an-insiders-view-on-local-lead-generation/

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/how-to-geotarget-ppc-campaigns-for-local

http://www.socialbrite.org/2009/06/30/seo-mistakes-to-avoid-on-nonprofit-sites/



Facebook Terminology

Facebook Help Center URLs and Other Resources

A custom tab is actually an application. We will use the words “landing page”, “landing tab”, and “custom tab” interchangeably.

A profile is for a user, while a page is for a business. I wish that Facebook would not use the term “page”, since a Facebook page can actually have many “pages”, which we call tabs to distinguish.

To interact with a page, you must “like” it — which is synonymous with being a fan. Thus, to leave a comment on a wall or widget, they must hit the “like” button. Perhaps half of all users understand that they must like the page to participate, even if they wish to complain or leave a negative comment.

Fan Page Title Guideline

• Help Center Facebook Ads• Ads: Ad Scheduling and Delivery• Ads: Ad Reports and Insights• Ads: Campaign Cost and Budgeting• Facebook Insights Help• Facebook Ad Campaign Inquiries• My Personal Profile was Disabled• Account Disabled• Ads: Glossary of Ad Terms• Report a Facebook Ad – Violations• Ads: Click and Impression Quality• User Name infringement form• Webinar: Killer Facebook Landing Pages – What Works and Why• How to place Facebook conversion tracking on Contact Form 7

Facebook FAQ For Client Questions

• How to get more fans to the page• What's the difference between a Facebook Page and Group?• How do I upload my company logo to my fan page?

Facebook For Your Further Education

SECTION 11 - FACEBOOK FOR YOUR FURTHER EDUCATION

http://www.facebook.com/help/ads-and-business-solutions

http://www.facebook.com/help/community/?id=867&by=date&order=desc




http://www.facebook.com/help/contact/?id=239064626155650

http://www.facebook.com/help/contact/?id=260749603972907





http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=208017472571983

http://landingpagesuccesssummit.com/landingpage/PreviewOne.html

http://constant.co.za/2010/07/facebook-conversion-tracking-with-contact-form-7/

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS461US461&sugexp=chrome,mod=15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=facebook+How+do+I+upload+my+company+logo+to+the+page%3F#hl=en&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS461US461&sclient=psy-ab&q=facebook+How+to+get+more+fans+to+the+page+&oq=facebook+How+to+get+more+fans+to+the+page+&gs_l=serp.3..0i22l4.3227.3227.0.3513.1.1.0.0.0.0.241.241.2-1.1.0...0.0...1c.FXyaZYnzinE&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=2733a454e9585cf4&biw=704&bih=938

http://www.facebook.com/blog/blog.php?post=324706977130

http://community.blitzlocal.com/discussion/29/how-do-i-upload-my-company-logo-to-my-fan-pages/p1



About the Author

“One of my mentors in Facebook advertising is Dennis Yu. Dennis recently guest blogged for SocialMedia.biz about his micro-targeting strategy, showing us how to target down to the individual. And, all of this, for less than $5 a day. Dennis, if you keep on giving away our secrets, no one will hire us. But, that’s the beauty of this man, who just wants to share his knowledge with all of us willing to learn from him. And, he still has plenty of tricks to teach us. I just hope he continues to share.”

—Richard Krueger, Author, Facebook Marketing for Dummies and Facebook Advertising for Dummies

“We were very impressed with the work that Blitz did for us in growing our Weekly World News Facebookcommunity.Inaworditwas“impact”.Assoonastheystartedworkingwithuswesaw an immediate increase in our community, and within a few days the exponential growth we experienced was nothing short of dramatic.”

—Geof Rochester, Weekly World News

“One of the most brilliant ideas to come along to serve Boomers — and beyond — in a long while.”

—Gillian Muessig, SEOmoz

“The Blitz team exceeded our expectations wildly and assisted us in igniting our fan growth to the extent that it is now making a material impact on business.”

—Eric Ludwig, Vice President, Rosetta Stone

Contact BlitzMetrics at: [email protected] (503) 244-1135

1960 Joslyn Pl. Boulder, CO 80304www.facebook.com/blitzmetrics

Dennis Yu, CEO and Founder [email protected] Dennis Yu has helped brands grow and measure their Facebook presence. He has spoken at Search Marketing Expo, Search Engine Strategies, Web 2.0, The American Marketing Association, PubCon, Conversational Commerce Conference, Pacific Conferences, HostingCon, Affiliate Summit, Affiliate Convention, UltraLight Startups, MIVA Merchant, and other venues. Yu has also counseled the Federal Trade Commission on privacy issues for social networks. Dennis has held leadership positions at Yahoo! and American Airlines. His educational background is Finance and Economics from Southern Methodist University and London School of Economics.

Documents

Social analytics training manual 2.9