The Next Engine: Beyond Campaign Thinking

• Google is Your Home Page
• Web Site Feedback as Your Secret Online Marketing Tool
• Brand vs. Usability
• Study: There is No Tipping Point, Blog Readers Are Skeptical
• “Free” is Killing Us–Blame The VCs
• 10 Ways the Internet (As We Know It) Will Die
• I’m Over Twitter
• The Web Beyond the Desktop
• Economic Impact of Word-of-Mouth Calculated Using Net Promoter Model
• Finding is the new advertising

Get the links and my take on ‘em after the jump.

• Google is Your Home Page
  A trueism that most of us in the digital marketing field take for granted. What’s starting to change is the realization that this isn’t a bad thing. I’m going to have to pull the reference (things get so easily lost in the fog of feeds + time), but it was recently written that a major national brand site should strive to get upwards of 50% of its traffic to interior pages via search engines (and other sources). This represents an exposure of the brand’s Long Tail of content and a truer immersion in the digital channel.
• Web Site Feedback as Your Secret Online Marketing Tool
  “Secret” in the sense that a standard, plain-jane feedback mechanism omnipresent and easily accessed on your site represents an easy and credible “we give a sh*t” message to your potential customers. “Contact Us” isn’t the same thing by any measure. “Feedback” = we want to know what you think about what you’re seeing right here, right now. “Contact Us” = give us your information so we can sell you something.
• Brand vs. Usability
  I’ll spoil the surpise right now — you can have both. Predictable, sure, but Jack Aaronson’s article conjures up a digital “supermarket test” - scroll down any random page on your site, past the navigation area: how long would it take the average consumer to discover that it’s your web site? 5 seconds? 20? You can have all the benefits of conventions/best practices-based design with a unique flavor to set your site apart and represent its unique brand attributes.
• Study: There is No Tipping Point, Blog Readers Are Skeptical
  I’ll admit to getting too caught-up in the Tipping Point hype; for a year I described myself as “Maven” in networking environments. The idea that there’s not as much to the notion of the super-influencer marries nicely with the overall criticism of agency navel-gazing. Extruding out from one’s own experience (I listen to these people = Regular Ordinary People do too) is one of the more aggravating tendencies of the national press corps, and marketing people in general (yes, I’m calling the supposedly objective media class marketers).
• “Free” is Killing Us–Blame The VCs
  Hank Williams says that venture capital firms are distorting the natural supply and demand system as it pertains to the web, funding startup after startup that gives away its core service in the hope of (eventually) being bought out by a larger entity. A number of these entities (*cough *cough Skype) end up being albatrosses around the necks of the patron firms. No one expects to pay for anything online — if Twitter starts charging, hell, I’ll just use Pownce. The expectation is such that patronage is the only way out (advertising being somewhat lacking). Techdirt isn’t so sure, reminding us that the inability to find scarcity in an industry or product (and thus opportunity for profit) is the fault of the shoddy businessperson.
• 10 Ways the Internet (As We Know It) Will Die
  Just in case you think it can’t happen… I’d pay particular attention to #8.
• I’m Over Twitter
  Organic’s Misha Cornes is throwing in the towel with Twitter and running down her reasons why. I must admit to having peaks and valleys in the Twitter usage, rising when I’m nearing or at a conference, descending afterwards. Despite this, the inimitable Mike Arrington runs down a stunning example of brand awareness of online opinion in Comcast, Twitter And The Chicken (trust me, I have a point). Also, Graham over at Entrecard takes the position on the other end, going so far as to declare that Twitter will be bigger than Facebook. (color me skeptical).
• The Web Beyond the Desktop
  Dave Shea runs down (in spectacular fashion) the diversity of devices that users may be visiting our sites on. Furthermore, he runs down the varying levels of attention that a user may have. The combination of these two variables produces a crazy-high number of permutations. Our development practices (and mental models) must become more adaptive and liquid to be truly effective. The time is nigh for a genuine seperation of content, presentation, structure, style and behavior, and the recognition on the part of businesses (both client and agency) of the effort required to see this developed and deployed.
• Economic Impact of Word-of-Mouth Calculated Using Net Promoter Model
  Thought I’d pop this on up here to backup and bolster Jeremy’s thoughts about the potential for the Net Promoter Score to be a bedrock benchmark for digital marketing.
• Finding is the new advertising
  I can’t put it any better than Gerry McGovern’s summary — Traditional advertising is broken because it charges us time, when time is becoming our most valuable resource. Ka-boom!

Tags: advertising, links, wom