BuzzBright

People are signing up for the BETA and creating accounts.  So far so good.  We are learning a lot and fixing bugs as we find them (or as you tell us about them).  First Lesson Learned:  We need better directions for creating brands.

When you create a brand, only list keywords that match what people say when talking about you (not your brand category).  If your brand is “Acme Blenders” your keywords should be “acme blenders”, “acmeblenders.com”, “blenders by acme” etc. Don’t use keywords like “blenders”, “best blender”, “smoothie maker” etc.  The Internet is Really Really Big and you don’t want to be notified every single time someone somewhere users a generic word like that.

Also, don’t forget to put quotation marks around multiple words unless you don’t care what order they appear in.

We’re working on a more wizard-like brand creation form to help people through this process.  Feel free to leave a comment with questions or feedback. 

Thanks!

Just click the Create a Feed link above to create an account.  You will need the secret BETA password to get in.  Email us to get it.  Please leave comments on this post with any feedback, suggestions, questions (or just email us).  It is very much a work in progress but the majority of the features or in place and (hopefully) you will find everything very useful as-is.  Thanks!

We’ve been using and testing BuzzBright interally at Cloudbrain for a few months and are ready to start opening things up.  There are still a few bugs to iron out and some small features we want to implement before launching, but we wanted to give our friends a chance to help us kick the tires and take her for a spin.

 If you would like to be part of the beta, contact “email [at] buzzbright [dot] com” and we’ll send you the details.

Things just got a little more difficult for the ad sales team at Facebook: Ad Age has an article in which Ted McConnell, general manager-interactive marketing and innovation at Procter & Gamble Co. states that he doesn’t think marketers have a right to advertise on social networking sites like Facebook because Facebook doesn’t own the content.

“What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?”

While it’s not myster that social network ads don’t perform well, I doubt it’s because user’s are offended that an advertiser has entered their personal world.  The users simply don’t care.  There’s too much going on.  It’s like trying to sell cough syrup to kids at the circus.  They won’t notice.

We’ve had great success with Facebook advertising and here’s the rule’s we’ve used:

1) Target. Target.  Target.  At the very least, specify the city (or school) and age.

2) Customize your ad so that the user knows it is targeted.  User’s aren’t freaked out by this. They appreciate that you want to reach them and not others.  For example: If targeting a particular college, use the school’s nickname or insider info in the ad headline.

3) Don’t expect anyone to click.  Just don’t.  They won’t. Trust me.  Facebook ads need to be part of a larger strategy marketing strategy.  If you do #1 and #2 correctly, people will notice and remember the ad.  That is what you want.  You want to make a lasting impression.  So when the user comes in contact with the other parts of your marketing campaign (i.e. word of mouth or Google ad) they will remember your brand or message from seeing it every day on Facebook while they checked out their friend’s pictures.

That last one is hard, but very effective.  It’s also very cheap.  Since Facebook charges per-click, and since you don’t want people to click your ads anyone, is very cheap to get your message viewed by thousands and thousands of people.   The hard part is the rest of the campaign.  Now that everyone has seen your ad multiple times, now what?

Patricia Handschiegel at the Huffington Post had a really thought-provoking article today:

Apparently, Mom Bloggers Care About Baby Slings, Not Child Rapists

Patricia had recently worked to get the Protect Our Children law passed and is wondering where the outrage over and passion was for her work from mom bloggers?  Why did mom’s freak out about Motrin’s baby-wearing marketing campaign, to the point of calling traditional media outlets, organizing boycotts and posting thousands of twitter messages - but not about a new law meant to protect those mom’s children from predators.

The reason is beyond the scope of this blog (translation: I’m not really sure, but my guess is that is has something to do with audience engagement) but this is a very real question facing any marketer: How do you create passion and engagement around your brand.  Motrin did it (unfortunantly).  What did they do differently?

The big news Monday was the world-wide blogosphere mommy melt-down over a marketing campaign for Motrin (touting the drug’s benefits to “babywearing” mothers with back pain).  Read about it here.  The ad was offensive, no doubt.  I recently became a father and my wife carries our daughter in a sling.  It’s great.  But that’s not the point.

The point isn’t even social networking.  This isn’t a lesson in new media marketing.  This is simply a lesson in research and knowing your audience.  Did Motrin ask any babywearing mother’s what they thought about this ad?  Did Motrin do some research to see what the most passionate and vocal mothers (i.e. mommy bloggers) thought?

Two Lessons:

1) Research your audience.  Know your market.  Obviously.

2) You can’t reach everyone.  But find out who the vocal minority are and go after them first.

My guess is that Motrin did #1 and not #2.  Oops.  Read more about the freak out on Jeremiah’s blog and AdFread.

The news making the rounds today is the big drop in online advertising prices.  The Rubicon Project reports prices have dropped neary 11% (from Silicon Alley Insider).  Depending on who you ask, this is either horrible news (Ad Networks and Publishers) or great news (Marketers) or simply a result of the public rising ability to ignore online ads (probably).

But if you have a product to market, this is great news for you.  Your marketing budget just go 11% more powerful.  The trick is: don’t expect anyone to click on your ads.  In fact, design them to not be clicked on (get your brand across in the ad, don’t use a teaser or trick).  The most affective way to use all these cheap, useless display ads is to re-inforce the social / conversational (viral, word or mouth, etc.) campaigns you are already running.  When someone hears about your product from a friend, that endorsement is a lot more powerful when the receive respond: “Hey, yea!  I think I’ve seen a bunch of ads for that thing on whatitcalled.com…”.  And they’re cheap.

We’ve had an ongoing discussion argument in the office about Facebook Groups vs. Fan Pages and which one is better used for promoting a product.  Fan Pages are the “official” way to go and have several benefits over plain old groups (detailed stats being the biggest).  However, the Fan Page critics argued that normal Facebook users (in our case, college students) don’t like becoming “fans” but have no problem joining almost any group.  Being a “fan” was too much of a committment (supposedly).

Well, after experimenting for a few months (and collecting non-scientific data from others) it looks like the critics are the way to go.  If your goal is to maximize the number of members or fans, go with a GROUP.  All things being equally, facebookers are MUCH more likely (to the tune of 500% more) to accept a group invitation than a fan page invite.

The one catch:  Pick a funny or interesting group name.  Users know that facebook groups show up in their interests list and use them for that purpose: to project an image of themselves.  They like to be in interesting sounding groups.

For now, this is a blog about social media marketing. We are in the process of building a powerful tool (website) to help marketing managers track and manage the online conversation about that brand.  We’ll let you know when we’re done.