New Media Morsels Published January - February 2008 Social media the way to go US based Forrester Research says that tomorrow’s marketers need to move from making messages to establishing community connections. In its first report on the Online sector for 2008, it claims that during tough economic times US marketers are likely to decrease spending in traditional media and even online vehicles geared to building awareness, but will continue to shift money into social media. Forrester sees more sophisticated marketers shifting their focus from “building awareness to motivating consideration”. According to AdWeek, its latest research report paints a grim view of the current state of advertising, which it believes is in a “world of hurt” because consumers are turning out to the messages the industry is predicated on producing. AdWeek says that pushing messages will likely give way to encouraging voluntary engagement and ongoing conversations will replace time-based campaigns. Source: Adweek.com Marketer preference for PPC falters while SEO surges While pay-per-click (PPC) advertising or Ad Words are among the favourite online techniques employed by Australian marketers, use in the US appears to be faltering while support for organic, or ‘natural language’ search engine optmisation (SEO) seems to be surging. This is according to MarketingSherpa's 5th Annual ad:tech Year-End Survey published on February 12.  See a summary of the study here. Marketer satisfaction with the ROI from paid search was down to 34% - a significant drop from the 49% who said it performed best in 2006. However, Sherpa says 57% of marketers surveyed said that SEO delivered "great ROI" and "outperformed other tactics."  This is close to a doubling in preference for SEO in just two years - in 2005 the Sherpa study showed only 33% favoured SEO as a marketing tactic. Sherpa believes increased competition and higher costs have dampened enthusiasm for paid search.  Another reason may be research, both here in Australia and overseas, that consistently shows that 85 percent of consumers go straight to natural search listings and only 15 percent look at the paid results that appear on the right hand column or at the top of a search page (as ‘sponsored links’). Also, consumers are becoming more sophisticated and can more readily distinguish paid from non-paid results. Note: Search engine optimisation (SEO) uses PR techniques, while PPC or Ad Words are purchased as advertising. Source: Search Insider Marketers fight back against ‘Cybersmear’ Increasingly key marketing web sites in the US are being usurped by rogue sites that use all kinds of techniques to enable them to jump to first ranking on the search pages of Google, Yahoo and other search engines. Using search engine optimisation (SEO) to get found through search engines such as Google has become a key marketing tool for many consumer-focused companies where consumers typically only read the first page of listings. However, many major consumer marketers find themselves competing with a disparaging web site which has managed to get itself to the top of the rankings. Delta Airlines (www.delta.com) is just one example of a company under attack in what is being called ‘cybersmear’. Delta found itself battling consumer site www.DeltaReallySucks.com for most of 2007. This site was ranked number one and it drew in thousands of consumers believing they were at the airline site.  Delta only managed to get back to the top of Google rankings pre Christmas. Experts say that many companies encourage the growth of consumer ‘attack sites’ by making their sites too ‘marketing speak’ and being reluctant to acknowledge and deal with criticism on their own site.   Companies that find themselves competing with a consumer attack site, as with Delta, have to make their site become more ‘real’ in order to get their number one search ranking back. Source: Brandweek.com B2B marketers bullish about online marketing B2B marketers in the US plan to increase online marketing spend during 2008. In fact the biggest increases in any marketing category will be seen in online marketing, with 79 percent of marketers planning to boost their online budgets according to BtoB’s “2008 Marketing and Plans” survey. Online, as a proportion of total marketing, is forecast to rise from 27 percent to 34 percent.  Web site development will be used by 74 percent of marketers, while email will be used by 70 percent and search engine marketing by 64 percent, and 26 percent will be engaging with social media. Currently only 20 percent of B2B marketers are using social media applications. 53 percent use social media for thought leadership, 40 percent for customer feedback, 31 percent for market research, 29 percent for advertising and 27 percent as a sales channel. Source: The Centre for Media Research/Media Post. Facebook Leads in Social Networking in Australia Facebook has overtaken rival MySpace as the most popular social networking site in Australia, according to a survey commissioned for B&T. Figures from an online poll carried out by PermissionCorp’s EmailCash arm, show that 23% of the 35,066 respondents favoured Facebook, while MySpace came in at 11.5%. Google-owned YouTube was also at 11.5%, while Bebo was the most popular site with 2.6% of people. The figures from December also show that 40% of people didn’t visit any social networking site. Source: B&T Feb 2008 Web 2.0 Security Challenges Group formed Web 2.0 applications within organisations are becoming commonplace and WorkLight, the developer of server-based software claimed to bring a secure and highly-personalised Web 2.0 computing experience to the enterprise, has formed the Secure Enterprise 2.0 Forum  to "promote awareness, industry standards, best practices, and interoperability issues related to the introduction of consumer technology into the workplace." According to its website, the forum is "comprised of top executives at Global Fortune 500 companies that are ready to address the security challenges posed by Web 2.0 technologies, such as wikis, blogs, RSS, widgets and gadgets, personalised homepages, social networks and social bookmarking, which are becoming increasingly popular in the enterprise." New Media: Podcasting Tips Do you have an Apple? Would you like to podcast?  Then Apple has some tips for you. Simply laid out and perfect for the beginner this comprehensive guide is a great place to start Source Church turns to social media in Lent campaign The Church of England has launched a social-networking campaign to encourage people to discuss how they can make the world a better place. Love Life Live Lent will feature groups on Facebook, MySpace and Flickr, and is being promoted by blogs from prominent figures, including the Bishop of Buckingham, from within the Church. A campaign site, livelent.net, has also been developed, and includes Bible study notes, podcasts and kids activities. Facebook group Facebook Love Life Live Lent Source: NMA  Feb 08 Network PR, publisher of PR Influences, specialises in Online PR including both social media and search engine optimisation.  To read more about their services click here. To make a no-obligation enquiry click here.

PR Influences: New Media Morsels