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At the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Sony introduced a new "personal Internet Viewer", called the Dash. This is a device that you can put on your nightstand or your kitchen counter, and access web content via Flash-based applications.

While attending the show, WebProNews stopped by Sony’s exhibit to get a closer look at the device. Abby Johnson provides that look in the following clip:

The device currently has over 1,000 free apps available, and it is open source, so anyone can create apps and submit them. Users can access things like weather, traffic, social networks, movies, music, etc. It has built in stereo speakers and a headphone jack.

The Dash will ship in April, and will retail for about $200. The question is, will consumers be interested in a device like this?

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The most powerful marketing campaigns are often the ones that we as consumers can identify with or connect to in some way. One way that businesses invoke such a feeling from potential customers is by telling a story with their marketing. This is called (appropriately) storyteller marketing.

Dana Todd of Newsforce recently sat down with WebProNews to discuss Storyteller marketing’s revival. She has some interesting things to say on the subject:

As noted by Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable, back in the summer of 2008, covering Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, Gary Stein, Director of Strategy for Ammo Marketing highlighted five stories that can be told:

1. Origin – where did you/your brand come from
2. Purpose – tells us why you are a business
3. Vision – similar to origin but is where are we going
4. Education – Starbucks educated people about traditions of coffee
5. Ethics – when someone walks the walks of what they are doing
6. Connection – reaching out and talking to the customer

In that same session, Sally Falkow of Expansion Plus added that the story should be simple, repeatable, and memorable. She also said that suggested that good places to find your brand’s story are from employees, your customers, and even suppliers.

As our own Abby Johnson points out in the above video, every business has a story. You may know what that story is, but if you look hard enough, you can find it, and you can use it. Chances are people will be able to connect with that story on some level (if it is the right story), and this can be a powerful way to keep your brand in people’s minds.
 

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> Small Businesses And Social Media

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The most powerful marketing campaigns are often the ones that we as consumers can identify with or connect to in some way. One way that businesses invoke such a feeling from potential customers is by telling a story with their marketing. This is called (appropriately) storyteller marketing.

Dana Todd of Newsforce recently sat down with WebProNews to discuss Storyteller marketing’s revival. She has some interesting things to say on the subject:

As noted by Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable, back in the summer of 2008, covering Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, Gary Stein, Director of Strategy for Ammo Marketing highlighted five stories that can be told:

1. Origin – where did you/your brand come from
2. Purpose – tells us why you are a business
3. Vision – similar to origin but is where are we going
4. Education – Starbucks educated people about traditions of coffee
5. Ethics – when someone walks the walks of what they are doing
6. Connection – reaching out and talking to the customer

In that same session, Sally Falkow of Expansion Plus added that the story should be simple, repeatable, and memorable. She also said that suggested that good places to find your brand’s story are from employees, your customers, and even suppliers.

As our own Abby Johnson points out in the above video, every business has a story. You may know what that story is, but if you look hard enough, you can find it, and you can use it. Chances are people will be able to connect with that story on some level (if it is the right story), and this can be a powerful way to keep your brand in people’s minds.
 

Related Articles:

> Small Businesses And Social Media

> The Future Of Online PR

> Is Retargeting the Most Under-Utilized Marketing Strategy?

Content duplication has been a buzz topic in SEO for a while now. You can read about it til you puke and never have to leave WebProNews.com. It’s one of the modern webmaster’s favorite things to fret over and has been for at least two years.

Google doesn’t like duplicate content.  We all get that now.  There is still the lingering perception that there is some sort of duplicate content penalty despite repeated assurances from multiple Googlers to the contrary.  Maybe there is no penalty; maybe there is some sort of mechanism at work that webmasters perceive as a penalty… it really matters very little.  At the end of the day, if you aren’t showing up for your own content but somebody else is… you probably aren’t the happiest little webmaster.

As a result, syndication has been quite unfairly vilified.  Traditionally speaking, having a site link to your content has always been perceived as a compliment of sorts (Google certainly thought it was a fair indicator of quality). That said, syndicating content… having your great content actually picked up by a larger, more influential site was even better in a lot of ways.  The syndicated content was put right in front of a whole new user base without them having to click a thing.  Generally you also got a nice link back to your site to boot. If you produced a great piece of content, why not have it show up everywhere you possibly could?

Penalty or not, it is clearly the case that the site where content originates may not always rank best for that content.  Google wants to do their best to make sure they keep the content of their results pages as distinct from one another as they can. In short, Google doesn’t want to have a result page where 4 of the 10 results are all essentially the exact same article.

Here’s the thing though syndication is good.  It can drive traffic to your site.  It can establish your reputation and credibility within a niche and it can generate high quality inbound links.  If you are upset because the larger, more recognized and more popular site’s syndication of your content outranks your own then I’d have to say you might need to rethink that one a little bit.  So what if it does? You are there because you want to be exposed to the larger site’s community.  You want the links, attention, reputation and all the good things that go along with that don’t you?  Of course you do.  So if you do a search and find that the big site is number one on a good search query with your content, you don’t get upset – you say ‘yay’.

Why do you say yay? Because your super great content would never have that top position if not for the fact that Google found it on the larger more authoritative site. Sure, if it’s that good you can probably get a decent ranking but it won’t be as good.  Beyond the ranking, even if your site is #2 and the big site is #3 for the same article, guess which one is likely to get clicked thru more; the link to your site, which is not all that well known? Or the link to a site that somebody has heard of?

If you aren’t a household name or a recognized authority in whatever areas you are covering, the fastest way to build that reputation and credibility is to become associated with the brand that is. What’s the best way to do that? Get your name, your company and your link on their domain. Because at the end of the day the likelihood of you just outranking them on your own for similar subject matter is probably going to be a tough order.

Abby Johnson talked to Eric Enge from Stone Temple Consulting at SES recently about the syndication vs. duplicate content problem.  Eric has some great tips in the video for minimizing the negative aspects of duplication on a syndication model.  Three specific items he talks about are syndicating excerpts, including a no-index tag, and writing ‘alternative’ versions of your content expressly for syndication.  He also talks about how effective a syndication model can be.  One site he’d worked with increased their traffic by over 50% using syndication almost exclusively. 

Google is also working on some stuff to help us help them (isn’t that just awesome of them?).  Read up on their new cross domain canonical tag.  It’s new, none of the other search engines support it yet, and it remains to be seen how effective it will be, but it’s a start.  Whatever you do, don’t throw the proverbial baby (syndication) out with the bathwater (duplicated content worries). There is a lot of upside to an effective syndication strategy.

Related Articles:

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One of the coolest parts about  my job is the fact that I am always up to speed on the latest and coolest stuff in the world of search, social media and things of that nature. Over the course of the past decade, there have been no shortage of things to keep my eye on. That’s one of the cool parts of my job. What makes it interesting however is not necessarily the emergence of these new tools and/or technologies but how they end up being used.

More WebProNews Videos

I’ll give you an example. A couple of weeks ago at SES Chicago, our own Abby Johnson had a chat with Liana Evans about the concept of ‘ghost tweeting’. Ghost Tweeting is the practice of having multiple people twittering on the same account. Earlier in the year, Guy Kawasaki kind of got the search marketers buzzing about this a little bit at SES New York when he admitted he employs people to post updates on his Twitter account.

So you have Twitter, growing like crazy, immensely popular… then you have marketers like Kawasaki doing something a little differently with it. What happens? Well, it doesn’t take long before people start to point and say things like; ‘he’s doing it wrong’ or ‘that isn’t how you’re supposed to use it’ and when folks really want to climb up and stick a flag in that moral high ground, they question the ethics. They’ll call it unethical. They’ll call it amoral. Why, I have no doubt that a few of them will even say it’s contributing to global warming. The nerve of this guy… um, Guy. Twittering in such a way. It’s unnatural.

Do you think ghost tweeting is a problem or a bad thing?  Let us know in the comments.

Now on the one hand, I can’t argue the rationale used when critics will say: it has his name on the account. It has his picture on the account. Therefore people assume that he is actually doing the talking. True, true and true… but so what? If you follow Guy, do you follow Guy because, gosh, he’s just so awesome and having a look at what he’s thinking every hour or so is just the high point of your day? Or, do you follow Guy because you like the articles, ideas and links he posts? I suppose if your Guy following is a product of the former, then, yes, you might reasonably be expected to feel somewhat disillusioned to learn that his hand may not be directly on the wheel of some of those updates. Then again, if this is the case, I would submit that you might need to talk to someone about adjusting your meds. Here’s a little revelation for you: the people you follow on Twitter are not your real ‘friends’. They are people who feel like they have something interesting (or not) to say and that somewhere someone might find what they have to say interesting enough to read it. That’s it.

Twitter ethics? Please. Morally responsible Tweets? I mean really people. I follow Kawasaki myself and have no problem suggesting you do too because he frequently has updates I find interesting for some reason or another. Does it matter that he isn’t personally typing or finding the updates? Not to me. Not even a little. He is employing people to Twitter things on his behalf and I assume, if nothing else, if they were Twittering things he didn’t agree with, like, or find interesting himself… well, he’d go get somebody else to do it. If the updates weren’t interesting, I would just stop reading them… or unfollow him altogether. Being upset because you find out Guy isn’t personally typing updates into his Twitter account is akin to seeing Michael Jordan out somewhere and being upset because he’s wearing something other than Hanes and drinking something other than Gatorade.

Was Twitter originally designed for marketers? No probably not. Again, so what? The Internet was created as a communications tool for the military. Was it designed for people to be able to order stuff from Amazon and play farm town? Was email designed for newsletters? Was video designed for porn? Ok, I’ll give you the porn thing maybe, but the rest of it? No, I don’t think so. The best internet tools are the tools with the broadest range of applications. If you have a good tool, invariably someone will use it in a way that was previously not considered or maybe even intended. Does that make the new application somehow wrong or evil?

As for ghost tweeting, I suppose it comes down to basically what Liana is saying in the video. It’s about the expectations of your followers. If they are following you because you are ‘you’ and ‘you’ are Tweeting about you (which is just creepy)… you may need to do your own updates. Otherwise, if the people following your account seem to be engaged and interested in what you are putting up there, then what in the world difference does it make as to who pushed the update button?

So where do you stand on this whole ‘ghost tweeting’ thing?  Sound off in the comments.

Related Articles:

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One of the coolest parts about about my job is the fact that I am always up to speed on the latest and coolest stuff in the world of search, social media and things of that nature. Over the course of the past decade, there have been no shortage of things to keep my eye on. That’s one of the cool parts of my job. What makes it interesting however is not necessarily the emergence of these new tools and/or technologies but how they end up being used.

More WebProNews Videos

I’ll give you an example. A couple of weeks ago at SES Chicago, our own Abby Johnson had a chat with Liana Evans about the concept of ‘ghost tweeting’. Ghost Tweeting is the practice of having multiple people twittering on the same account. Earlier in the year, Guy Kawasaki kind of got the search marketers buzzing about this a little bit at SES New York when he admitted he employs people to post updates on his Twitter account.

So you have Twitter, growing like crazy, immensely popular… then you have marketers like Kawasaki doing something a little differently with it. What happens? Well, it doesn’t take long before people start to point and say things like; ‘he’s doing it wrong’ or ‘that isn’t how you’re supposed to use it’ and when folks really want to climb up and stick a flag in that moral high ground, they question the ethics. They’ll call it unethical. They’ll call it amoral. Why, I have no doubt that a few of them will even say it’s contributing to global warming. The nerve of this guy… um, Guy. Twittering in such a way. It’s unnatural.

Do you think ghost tweeting is a problem or a bad thing?  Let us know in the comments.

Now on the one hand, I can’t argue the rationale used when critics will say: it has his name on the account. It has his picture on the account. Therefore people assume that he is actually doing the talking. True, true and true… but so what? If you follow Guy, do you follow Guy because, gosh, he’s just so awesome and having a look at what he’s thinking every hour or so is just the high point of your day? Or, do you follow Guy because you like the articles, ideas and links he posts? I suppose if your Guy following is a product of the former, then, yes, you might reasonably be expected to feel somewhat disillusioned to learn that his hand may not be directly on the wheel of some of those updates. Then again, if this is the case, I would submit that you might need to talk to someone about adjusting your meds. Here’s a little revelation for you: the people you follow on Twitter are not your real ‘friends’. They are people who feel like they have something interesting (or not) to say and that somewhere someone might find what they have to say interesting enough to read it. That’s it.

Twitter ethics? Please. Morally responsible Tweets? I mean really people. I follow Kawasaki myself and have no problem suggesting you do too because he frequently has updates I find interesting for some reason or another. Does it matter that he isn’t personally typing or finding the updates? Not to me. Not even a little. He is employing people to Twitter things on his behalf and I assume, if nothing else, if they were Twittering things he didn’t agree with, like, or find interesting himself… well, he’d go get somebody else to do it. If the updates weren’t interesting, I would just stop reading them… or unfollow him altogether. Being upset because you find out Guy isn’t personally typing updates into his Twitter account is akin to seeing Michael Jordan out somewhere and being upset because he’s wearing something other than Hanes and drinking something other than Gatorade.

Was Twitter originally designed for marketers? No probably not. Again, so what? The Internet was created as a communications tool for the military. Was it designed for people to be able to order stuff from Amazon and play farm town? Was email designed for newsletters? Was video designed for porn? Ok, I’ll give you the porn thing maybe, but the rest of it? No, I don’t think so. The best internet tools are the tools with the broadest range of applications. If you have a good tool, invariably someone will use it in a way that was previously not considered or maybe even intended. Does that make the new application somehow wrong or evil?

As for ghost tweeting, I suppose it comes down to basically what Liana is saying in the video. It’s about the expectations of your followers. If they are following you because you are ‘you’ and ‘you’ are Tweeting about you (which is just creepy)… you may need to do your own updates. Otherwise, if the people following your account seem to be engaged and interested in what you are putting up there, then what in the world difference does it make as to who pushed the update button?

So where do you stand on this whole ‘ghost tweeting’ thing?  Sound off in the comments.

Related Articles:

> Twitter Takes SMS Tweeting To Australia

> Twitter Gets Hacked By "Iranian Cyber Army"

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At SES Chicago, there was an interesting session in which a group of search marketing professionals debated the issue of which is better between PPC and SEO. Participants included Dave Naylor, Chirstine Churchill, Michael Gray, and Karen Weber, and Rand Fishkin.

Does PPC have more benefits than SEO? Comment here.

Churchill pointed to a study from Engine Ready on conversion rates by source of traffic (PPC vs organic). The study found:

- Conversion rates: PPC just barely beat SEO
- Average Order Value: Paid won
- Average time on site: Paid won

She gave the following as advantages of PPC:

- Gives immediate online presence
- Have a new site? Have ads in an hour
- Start getting ROI sooner
- No ramp up time
- Great for seasonal items or time sensitive promotions
- Great for testing
- Easily test effectiveness of new marketing message or site design change
- Quickly gather feedback
- Regulate traffic volume
- Sales pipeline empty? Use PPC to push traffic
- Overloaded? Pause campaigns or cut back spend
- Have limited sales season? Saturate market while demand is high

"PPC is very agile. It’s also has targeting advantages," said Churchill.

For targeting, she says PPC provides opportunity for high visibility in multiple channels (search engines, content sites, mobile phones), expands results beyond search results, and gives you control over placement on SERPs and better control over landing page/message.

It’s often easier to sell PPC to management because the concept is similar to traditional advertising, and provides for direct accountability. It’s easy to track measures of success. It’s an effective way to drive qualified traffic to your site, and it allows you to expand your opportunities.

Weber says the top five reasons why "PPC rules," are: speed, flexibility, it’s unlimited, it’s goal-driven, and it’s controllable. You can quickly manipulate keywords to those that drive conversions, you can quickly change bid prices, and you can quickly get in and out of the market. You can turn your campaign on and off, and change ad copy, keywords, etc. You can target a much wider range of keywords, adhere to a budget, and have an immediate impact on sales.

Fishkin pointed out that PPC gets 10% of clicks, but 90% of spend. He said SEO is more challenging and less controllable, but the spend is there and the fact that people click organic results.

Gray said he believes that PPC could make SEO better, but Google is banning people now, so it makes things more challenging. Naylor said he believes SEO is more "open." Weber and Fishkin both said they would outsource PPC over SEO.

Gray said it’s important to get in the top during the early part of the research phase, especially since Google is personalizing results for everyone now. Churchill noted that Google’s personalization is a better argument for PPC. Like iEntry CEO Rich Ord recently noted, the addition of personalized results could "make people less reliant on organic search results for their traffic and in turn increase their use of Adwords."

Another point was brought up as we recently discussed – that the search engines are pushing organic listings down with mixed media (blended, universal) results.

Certainly there are many advantages to both PPC and SEO, and they can compliment one another. Actually, a recent study from a couple of NYU Stern professors found that organic search engine results can play a direct role in whether or not a paid listing is clicked.

Which do you think is more important – SEO or PPC? Share your thoughts here.

WebProNews reporter Abby Johnson contributed to this report.

Related Articles:

> Does an Organic Search Presence Help Paid Result Performance?

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> Optimizing for Mixed Media Search Results

In the olden days, PR professionals might have gotten an hour or more of face time in which to sweet talk someone over a meal.  Now, they occasionally make pitches in 140 characters.  So you can imagine how the information shared during a conference session titled "Online PR: Where to Next?" could prove quite useful to a lot of people.

(Coverage of SES Chicago continues at WebProNews Videos.  Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

Beth Harte, who wears a number of hats (including that of Community Manager) for MarketingProfs, started by stating that press releases and visibility are just part of the game.  Advertising, issues management, public affairs, lobbying, and investor relations all count, as well, and she stressed, "Real public relations is relationships."

Harte also said, "Social media tools will change.  People being social won’t."  She recommended listening, communicating, partnering, telling your story, and getting people to talk as a result.

Next, Marty Weintraub, President of aimClear, talked about the intersection of PR and SEO.  Stay interested in links, and write SEO-savvy press releases.  Get social media profiles ranked, and do guest blogging stints if possible.  Finally, provide people a reason to rebroadcast your name (and do a little good) by helping charities.  Weintraub suggested, "Give and give and give some more."

Then came Duncan Alney, President and Social Media Strategist of Firebelly Marketing.  He discussed the visual component of PR, stating, "Online video is used more than all major TV networks," and indicated that continued growth is likely.  Video is very shareable, Alney pointed out, so PR professionals should start refining their strategy and execution and accumulating experience now.

At last, Andy Beal, the CEO of Trackur, wrapped up the session.  He pointed out that there is advanced technology for monitoring industry trends, competitors’ buzzwords, your own reach, and potential allies.  Take advantage of it.  And as for the future, Beal predicted that there will be dynamic content in press releases, link tracking across platforms, performance-based press release pricing, and RFID for your content.

WebProNews Reporter/Anchor Abby Johnson contributed to this report.

Related Articles:

> How Marketers Can Find Success Via Search

> Optimizing For Mixed Media Search Results

> Yahoo Lets Users See How They’re Being Tracked For Ads

The closing keynote of the BlogWorld Expo this past weekend was set up like The Late Show. Guy Kawasaki came out and told some jokes in David Letterman fashion (complete with Late Show-like desk and chairs), then he introduced the audience to actor/comedian Kevin Pollak.

Pollak talked about his online chat show at KevinPollakChatShow.com. He also proceeded to do impersonations of Christopher Walken and William Shatner, and talked about making fun of Larry King. Pollak acknowledged that his site isn’t a very good one. It’s not incredibly well-designed. It is, however, successful. He noted that he has Jason Calacanis as a partner.

After Pollak, they brought out the guys from Chad Vader, the people responsible for this:

They talked about how they got started and how unbelievable their success was. Then they brought out Jenny the Bloggess, who blogs for serveral publications. She admitted that she was a bit nervous and had to have alcohol before she came out. At that point, Kawasaki pulled a bottle of wine from the desk and they all drank out of the bottle, and handed it to the audience. It was then passed around the room.

Some people weren’t particularly thrilled with this part of the show from the sound of it. Blogger David Risley, who was in attendance, wrote this about the keynote on his blog:

The closing keynote was a bit of a train wreck. Kevin Pollack is absolutely hilarious. The Chad Vader guys and the Bloggess were a stretch. The keynote was dirty. I heard words come out of Guy Kawasaki’s mouth that I would have never expected (dude, you’ve got a brand to uphold – don’t blow it!). All in all, this was gutter-level humor I would have expected from a late night comedy special from crappy comedians on HBO. This is Blogworld and it is worthy of respect. Let’s act like it. I’m not opposed to a little foul language. I use it myself sometimes on this blog to get the point across. But, there are limits.

I get the impression, however,  that most people had a lot of fun with the keynote. It wasn’t just about fun though. There was also a point to be made.

The main takeaway was this: The web has allowed each of these people to be stars in their own way, and in ways that traditional media would never have allowed. Pollak said that he was approached by a major studio who wanted him to take his show to them, but they wouldn’t let him do 2-hour interviews, so he declined. He can do it however he wants online.

WebProNews reporter Abby Johnson contributed to this report from BlogWorld.

Jeremiah Owyang worked as a senior analyst over social computing for Forrester Research for almost two years.  Now, he’s a partner at the Altimeter Group, which focuses on emerging technologies and has a large "Twitter Updates" section above the fold on its homepage.  So Owyang was a good choice to speak about social media and business at BlogWorld.

(Coverage of the BlogWorld conference continues at WebProNews Videos.  Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

"Social everywhere" was one of the main themes of Owyang’s talk.  Corporate websites are becoming irrelevant, he claimed, and must at least integrate social media (as most mainstream media sites already have).  "Join customers and fish where the fish are," Owyang advised.

Two other ideas he put forward were aggregating customer opinions on product pages and integrating community support within products.  "Why would you do this?  Because the conversations these solutions create are more trusted," Owyang said.

Owyang also said that real-time reactions aren’t always fast enough, and as an example, cited the "Motrin Mom" mess.  So try to get ahead and anticipate customer needs by developing an active listening program and empowering a customer advocacy program.  Think holistically about your corporate strategy and prepare for personalized content, too.

Then Owyang issued a few tips with respect to blogging.  Time is like money, he observed, since you never have enough and everybody wants a piece of it.  So budget your time, pay yourself first, maintain your blog on a regular basis, and be sure to make agreements with your employer.

WebProNews Video reporter/anchor Abby Johnson contributed to this report.