Entitled “Social Media, Not Just for Kids Any More,” check it out on The JAR Group’s Blog

Brands are always dying to know what customers think of them. I came across a site that tells them just that – brandtags.net. It shows you a brand logo and you respond with a word or phrase that pops into your head. You can then see what other people said in a “tag cloud” format, ie. more popular terms are displayed in a larger font. A very simple idea, but its simplicity is its value to marketers.

Many of the brands show what you’d expect – for Wallgreens I thought “drugs” and sure enough the majority also thought this, along with “drug store,” “pharmacy,” and “cheap.” If Walgreens is trying to position themselves as cheap then they are doing a good job. If not, then their Brandtags should tell them that they are off course.

For Jack in the Box I noted “fat”, which based on the font size was an average response. I would love to see the responses trended over time, ie. do less people think “fat” now than 6 months ago; is JIB’s health initiatives paying off?

Then there are the brands like Midevil Times – I immediately thought about that scene in Cable Guy where Jim Carrey jousts Matthew Broderick. Sure enough I wasn’t the only one. Based on the font size, “Cable Guy” is the most popular term to come to mind when thinking about Midevil Times. Not to say that their marketing people weren’t aware of this phenomenon in the past, but they should definitely understand how big of an impact this has been on their brand.

The results are interesting and sometimes entertaining, and I’d venture to say a lot of brands would really value the results. As opposed to focus groups where people say what they think they should say, you can infer that these results are honest because of the anonymity of the process. And much like search engine keyword research, the results can give you an unobstructed lens into the minds of your customers.

As an internet marketer, keyword research and analysis takes up a big portion of my day. I am constantly trying to find creative new ways to illustrate to clients that the keywords people enter into the search engines can tell us almost everything we need know about them – where are they in the buying cycle, what exactly about a product are they interested in, how much they are willing to spend, and more…

For those of you who need even further proof of the revealing nature of keywords look no further than Google.org’s Flu Trends project. Google realized that they could use their wealth of keyword data for the greater good by releasing search trends relating to flu keywords.

We have found a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Of course, not every person who searches for “flu” is actually sick, but a pattern emerges when all the flu-related search queries from each state and region are added together. We compared our query counts with data from a surveillance system managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and found that some search queries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening. By counting how often we see these search queries, we can estimate how much flu is circulating in various regions of the United States.

They don’t say which keywords they monitor for this project but I’m sure it includes ones like “flu symptoms,” “headaches,” “fever,” etc. Check out a Google Trends search I ran for “flu symptoms.” You can see that the trends look very similar to their Flu Trends reports.
Google Flu Trends is remarkably accurate when compared to the CDC’s reports. The big difference is that Google’s reports are practically real-time whereas the CDC is 2 weeks or more delayed. I would also imagine that producing this is costing Google much less than it costs the CDC, being that they are using data that is already collected.

It will be interesting to see how seriously this innovation will be taken by the medical community. If Google decides to release more in-depth information then we could start to determine exactly what symptoms are affecting the public and the severity of these symptoms – FYI, this is already possible using Google’s Adwords Tool if you have the time and the knowhow. I am also curious to see where else they will take this concept. People search Google for every topic imaginable and useful trends can be released in any number of areas – presidential public approval, stock market activity, awareness of issues, etc.

A new site called Tabbloid emails you a PDF “magazine” version of your favorite blogs. Just enter the rss feed or feeds and how often you’d like to be updated. You can have it send you a new edition every week.

I can see a few good uses for this

• Use it to view blogs offline. Upload it to your iPhone, or read in the subway or on a flight.
• Bloggers can offer weekly PDF’d versions of their blogs to readers. This would be beneficial to non-technical readers who are not yet familiar with RSS and newsreaders. It allows readers to easily email and pass around your content. You can use it for a weekly email newsletter that is well formatted and ready to send.
• Busy executives can have their assistants create them a weekly newsletter of only the most relevant blog posts. It is a good alternative to sending someone a long list of links and is good for those who are technically challenged.

Tabbloid PDF RSS Docs

Check out an example Tabbloid that I generated here. It was made from my Google Reader Shared Items feed.

Not that I’m that old, but when I first started doing internet marketing it was slightly before the time when the majority started seeing the potential of the internet as a marketing vehicle (web 1.8). When I told someone I was an internet marketer the first thing they said was, “you’re the guy who sends me all that junk mail.”

Now when I tell people (even non-marketers) about my job they have some kind of idea of what I do. The questions I get now are mostly around the concept of Social Media. What is it? Where is it heading? I don’t see how the pictures of my dog I share with my friends could ever make companies money?

Well those are some pretty major concepts, so instead of delving into each I’m going to give you some of the most helpful links about the concepts that I’ve come across.

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What is Social Media?

Wikipedia’s definition of Social Media – primarily Internet-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences.

A presentation: What The F**K is Social Media?

Where is it heading?

• Social networks will be like air
• Social media is the future of business and personal life (and will one day save the world)

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I don’t see how the pictures of my dog I share with my friends could ever make companies money?

Wikipedia’s definition of Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a form of internet marketing which seeks to achieve branding and marketing communication goals through the participation in various social media networks such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, YouTube, Dailymotion, Hi5, Gather.com, social web applications (webapps) such as reddit, Digg, Stumbleupon, Flickr, iLike, Wikipedia, Squidoo, Last.fm, Twitter, Eventful, ePinions and others as well as within 3D virtual worlds such as Second Life, ActiveWorlds, Moove and There.com.

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Further Reading

• Alltop’s Top Social Media Blogs
• Dosh Dosh’s very thorough article series on Social Media

Are you the only one using your username online? You should be. Your username is your identity online and there are advantages to using the same name for across online accounts

• Easier to remember
• People in your social networks can recognize you
• You can craft your reputation online through your username

It’s not realistic to keep up with creating your user name on every email, social network, photo storage, blog, etc. website. But, when you see a new site come up that has potential, or that you’ve been meaning to use at some point, it is worth taking the minute to make a profile with your screen name. I suggest having a “throwaway” email account to register to prevent having excess junk mail being sent to your regular email account.

Another benefit of creating the accounts is that you will have control over more of the top results in the search engines for “your name” keywords – a prime objective of any online reputation management campaign. This is especially important if you have a common name and would like to be the one who people see when your name is Googled. This is also a great tactic if you are well-known and would like to prevent online vandals from having their way with your name.