[Build Backlinks Online] Transmedia Storytelling: Building Worlds For and With Fans

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Transmedia Storytelling: Building
Worlds For and With Fans'


Posted by gfiorelli1

John loves Batman.

He's collected comics since he was nine years old, is proud of owning the first
edition of Gotham by Gaslight,andstill remembers the afternoons spent watching
the TV series with Adam West at home when he was a kid.

Obviously, he has seen all the movies. The Dark Knight was a masterpiece; the I
believe in Harvey Dent web campaign and the Joker counter site were pure genius,
as were all the other sites created for that movie.

The passion John has for Batman is such that he could not resist, and ended up
buying some action figures, Batman Arkham City, and the Batman Lego video games,
too.But John is especially proud of the two short stories he wrote and published
in Fan Fiction.

Seriously, John loves the universe of the Batman stories.

This universe is the consequence of the most complex and exciting expression of
our culture nowadays: Transmedia Storytelling.

What is it Transmedia Storytelling?

Henry Jenkins presented the idea of Transmedia Storytelling for the first time
in 2003 in the MIT Technology Review magazine.The idea can be defined as a story
that unfolds across multiple media outlets and platforms, and in which a portion
of the end users take an active role in the process of expansion.

Transmedia Storytelling tends to be mistaken for Cross Media, which can be
defined asone story - rather than different ones pertaining to the same
narrative universe - narrated through different media channels. Although,
nowadays the two terms are used almost as if they were synonyms.

In the same semantic galaxy, we can find concepts like:


Multiple platforms (or multi-device)

Intertextual commodity


Transmedial narrative


Transmedial worlds



The characteristics of Transmedia Storytelling

Spreadability vs. drillability

Spreadability refers to the expansion of a narrative through viral practices in
social networks and the Web.Drillability is the task of penetration into the
audience the producer develops to find the core of the fan base of his work;
those ones who will disseminate and expand the transmedia productions.

Continuity vs. multiplicity

Transmedia worlds must have a continuity across the different languages and
platforms that are used. For example, we expect Indiana Jones to behave in the
same way as in a movie as in a video game.This continuity is complemented by
multiplicity, which is the creation of seemingly incoherent narrative
experiences related to the original narrative world. The Gotham by Gaslight
comic cited before is a good example of multiplicity.

Immersion vs. extractability

Transmedia stories almost always offer to their consumer the opportunity to
immerse themselves in their worlds (an example are the games inspired by a
series or film or novel).On the other hand, the gadgets allow us to extract
elements of the story and bring them to our everyday life. A special type of
extractability is the reverse product-placement (for instance, the Duff beer of
The Simpsons).

World building

As any other form of storytelling, Transmedia Storytelling presents a narrative
world, which requires the suspension of disbelief by the user. This suspension
is more effective the more detailed the narrative world is. Details like
Sherlock Holmes playing a Stradivarius or snorting a line of cocaine are
thosegiving verisimilitude to the narrative world. Inception, somehow, described
well how the Transmedia professionals see themselves as World Building
Architects.

Seriality

Transmedia storytelling is dispersive, and by its nature tends to be serial.
The seriality is not linear, but becomes an hypertextual network.

Subjectivity

In Transmedia, the presence of multiple subjectivities is common. Therefore,
Transmedia tends to enhance the polyphony caused by the large number of
characters and stories. A classic example was Lost.

Performance

The actions of the consumers are essential as the fans are evangelists.Some of
them - like our John - give the next step and become prosumers (producer +
consumer), and do not hesitate in creating new texts and add them to further
expand the boundaries of the original narrative world. Just think what would be
Star Trek without the Trekkers.

Transmedia, which was at first a pop culture new form of storytelling
spontaneously originated in the entertainment industry, is now spread and common
in fields like journalisms and, for some years now. It's a form of branding.

This sophisticated form of marketing, which we'll call "Inbound Square," has a
rather complex creation process, such that I decided to present it in a more
"digestible" Slideshare.



Transmedia Storytelling from Gianluca Fiorelli


The Transmedia prototype: Star Wars

The Transmedia expansion of Star Wars began immediately after its premiere on
May 25, 1977. In July of the same year, Marvel published the firstStar Wars
comic, and even though the first six numbers reflected what was seen in the
movies, new situations started being presented from the seventh number onwards.

In 1978, the first novel, Splinter of the Mind's Eye-a spin-off based on an
early version of the script -was published.But it wasn't until 1987, with the
commercialization of the Star Wars roleplaying game, that George Lucas created
what is known as the Star Wars Expanded Universe. It covers about 4,000 thousand
years of history of that "galaxy far far away" and is not public (the
Encyclopedia section of the official Star Wars site is not the same).From that
moment, the flood of products began: video games (from X-Wing to the Old
Republic MMORPG), the Director's Cut of the first trilogy, the new trilogy,
cartoons series, new comics, new novels, and even radio versions.

Star Wars is also paradigmatic of the relationship between the producer (George
Lucas) and the fans, who (from one side) have taken possession of the Star Wars
universe from the beginning,while (from the other side) George Lucas tried for a
long time to keep under strict control the expansion of the universe of the Star
Wars narrative with actions such as The Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards(here
you can see some of those fans creations).

It is humanly impossible to monitor and classify all the variants that fans
have created within the narrative universe of Star Wars, such as the stories
published on Fanfiction.com,sites like Death Star PR, Twitter bots likeYoda,
photos using the action figures, and all kinds of videos published on YouTube.
The fans have created contentranging from the staid tribute to parody itself,
like this hilarious Lego video based on the Eddie Izzard gag of the Death Star
canteen:



Transmedia Storytelling gives gigantic opportunities, which is why it can help
explain the acquisition of Lucas Films by Disney and that J.J. Abrams, creator
of now classic Transmedia example as Lost and Fringe (and director of the
revamped Star Trek movies series) was chosen as the director of the next
trilogy.

Transmedia and Hollywood

The relationship between the producer and the fans is critical to the success
of any Transmedia Storytelling strategy, and Hollywood has understood its
implications the best so far.A good, recent example is The Hunger Games movie
trilogy.



I strongly suggest you to recover the post that Bryden McGrath wrote for
Portent: 44 Ways 'The Hunger Games' Social Media Campaign Increased the Movie's
Odds of Success. What Bryden defines as a "social media campaign" really is the
"spreadability" social side of the transmedia campaign thatIgnitioncreated for
Lions Gate, the film's producer:



The Hunger Games Case Study from Ignition on Vimeo.

This campaign has just been relaunched last week, with the presentation of the
first trailer of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

This time, a new site was created in partnership with Microsoft Internet
Explorer, The Hunger Games Explorer, which works as a hub for all the sites and
social media profiles used in this transmedia experience (check the Capitol.pn
official site..., or its Google+ page).

Another great - and maybe more complete - example of Transmedia Storytelling is
that Ridley Scott and (again) Ignition created for Prometheus last year. This
video below explains (better than I can) why it was created, how it was
structured, what channels were used, and the results it obtained:



Prometheus Transmedia Campaign from Ignition on Vimeo.

I'm sure that many of you remember having seen some of the things Campfire
created for the transmedia campaign preview of the first season of Games of
Thrones on HBO.



Game of Thrones Case Study from Campfire on Vimeo.

Here's the big question: can only big major movies or tv series do transmedia?
Absolutely not.

An example is the Veronica Mars Movie Project, which two weeks agoclosed its
crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, all based on fans and social media, after
managing to accumulate $5,702,153.



Transmedia journalism

Journalism - real journalism - is storytelling. There is no discussion about
that, as it was well explained in Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers
Guide published by the Nieman Foundation.

Transmedia storytelling is the next logical step that journalism has already
done (not always perfectly).Remember that:


In transmedia, a story is narrated among different media channels and
platforms.

Prosumers actively participate in the construction of the narrative world.


Here's a more recent example about a world event that shook many people in many
countries. Do you remember how the world discovered that Osama Bin Laden was
dead? Here's how it went down:


"Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)."


Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual) 01 maggio 2011


Not long after, when the entire Internet was discussing the news, Keith Urbhan
launched this tweet:


"So I'm told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot
damn."


Keith Urbahn (@keithurbahn) 02 maggio 2011


Check out the postGilad Lotan wrote on Social Flow to understand the social
earthquake that tweet caused.

President Obama announced the news of the Osama Bin Laden death an hour later,
and after his announcement, it became known that many people in many countries
already knew through social media.

From that moment, the journalistic storytelling (as well as continuing in
social networks) expanded in the news portals, televisions, radios, and, of
course, the printed paper.

This event relied on transmedia, was "organic," and was unplanned (obviously),
but nontheless, it was transmedia.



Transmedia journalism, which is well explained by Kevin Moloney in is thesis
Porting Transmedia Storytelling to Journalism (2011), substantially means that
the news must generate a space, which allows the active participation of the
readers/viewers. It is not surprising, nowadays, seeing how much this
interaction between the journalists and the readers is central in the news
industry.

Transmedia journalism can take many different forms, but all must see the
reader - meant as a free citizen - as a contributor in the creation and
storytelling of news:



Great examples of Transmedia journalism can be find in sites like 18 day in
Egyptor Storify.

Transmedia branding

Do you remember the concept of Liquid Content promoted by Coca Cola? Well, that
is nothing but the Coca Cola definition of Transmedia Storytelling.

Brands have found a naturally ally for their marketing efforts in transmedia
(and crossmedia) for years. Think to the Art of Heist ARG created for the launch
of Audi 3 in the USA, to the first Old Spice campaign or, more recently, to
theDaybreak transmedia campaign created for AT&T, which shows five online
movies, two websites (you can discover the second almost in the footer of the
fist), and an app.

Another example is Dove's extremely recentReal Beauty Sketches campaign created
by Ogilvy Brasil, which cannot be defined really as transmedia, but that
showcases the transmedia spirit: narrating a story, which represents the brand's
world ("Real Beauty") to its fans (women just as they are) by using channels
likes online video, a microsite, and social networks (Facebook, especially). The
purpose was to create a public, yet intimate dialogue with the fans, and the
campaign surely obtained that objective. It did so well that it already has
originated a parody:



You can read here more about the story behind the Dove's campaign.

I can imagine the doubts you may have in your mind: a narrative world is easier
when you have a movie, a series, a book, or news, but what about my website?
What about my bolts and rolled aluminum factory?

I understand your hesitations, but the answer is that you are probably
searching in the wrong place. All brands have a story, and the basis of their
stories are in their mission pages, that you usually forget exists.

Let's take two example: REI and our own SEOmoz.

REI has created all its business, and marketing, around few very clear values:



(Image taken from How to Build SEO into Content Strategy, by Jonathon Colman)

Those values, the REI's "Why," define the narrative world of REI, which is
shared by more than five million members of the Company (REI is a cooperative).

We have a narrative world through of outdoor adventure, environmentalism, and
stewardship, along with a gigantic base of brand evangelists who not only share
what REI does (and sells), but create their own narratives inside the REI's
world. That is the base from where Transmedia Storytelling can be built, and REI
seems to be moving towards it with ideas like the REI 1440 Project, the REI
Members Stories YouTube videos. They also have a presence in Facebook, Twitter,
Pinterest, Instagram, and all their IRL events (i.e.: Learn at REI and Travel
with REI).

What about SEOmoz? Moz could do transmedia, and actually (without maybe knowing
it) it does it, because - as I told before - transmedia is the "Inbound Square."

Moz has built its story around the 6 TAGFEE Tenets;has built a community of
entusiastic people (yes, you!)around its tools and Internet marketing
philosophy; and a narrative world, which evolves thanks to the fans, both
internally (YouMoz, QA) and externally (check the Mozscape API's Gallery).

The world of fans that SEOmoz nurtures with gamification (one of the experience
principle of transmedia) and live events like MozCon, meet-ups, and MozCation is
the most transmedia campaign SEOmoz has created so far. And, finally and
importantly, Moz has Roger.

Conclusion

People have always needed stories to communicate and feel connected, and good
stories always become part of our history and our culture.
The most recognized brands have one thing in common: they all tell a story.

But something is changing. Never before have people had so many devices and
screens from which to follow a story, and now the consumers seek new experiences
and a deeper engagement. The stories are formed and followed differently than
before.

In order to be relevant for a hyper-connected generation and be present in its
life, we need:


Liquid and customizablecontent to distribute by any means available.

Different levels of depth in the story made ââfor different levels
of depth of user involvement.

A consistent message, where each piece feeds the story and the conversation
with the audience continuously.


What we need is Transmedia Storytelling, aprocess where the elements of a story
are dispensed each other through multiple distribution channels with the purpose
of creating a unified entertainment experience, where each medium really makes
its own contribution to the development of the story.

Transmedia Storytelling is a very powerful and immersive persuasion tool, a
fans-generating machine, because it creates a strong emotional connection with
the audience.It is profitable because it redefines and increases ROI, increases
impact over media, and can cause exceptional sources of income.
Transmedia Storytelling, finally, is the best and most effective way to connect
(especially) with the new generations of consumers and build a sustainable
audience around a brand, as Red Bull demonstrated.

So... are you ready to tell your story?


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[Build Backlinks Online] How to Incorporate Key Performance Indicators Into Your Video Marketing

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'How to Incorporate Key
Performance Indicators Into Your Video Marketing'

Recently, we discussedways touse a call-to-actionwith videos,but there is one
more step to a CTA: measuring its effectiveness. When measuring the success
ofyour video, there are a variety ofkey performance indicators (KPI) to pay
close attention to. A key performance indicator is a tool you use to measure and
decide the relative success of your [...]How to Incorporate Key Performance
Indicators Into Your Video Marketing is a post from: Convince and Convert:
Social Media Strategy and Content Marketing Strategy


You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/video-marketing/how-to-incorporate-key-performance-indicators-into-your-video-marketing/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-to-incorporate-key-performance-indicators-into-your-video-marketing

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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Help, Viral Searches Killed My PPC! 5 Tips for Detecting Unrelated Search Queries Early'

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In the past, Erin covered how celebrity-related keywords can screw up your traffic: Help, My Search Query Report Has Bieber Fever! Now I would like to talk about new queries which can appear instantly because of new viral content and interfere with your existing PPC campaigns.

Last year, a Denham Springs woman set up a "middle finger" made of Christmas lights on her roof to upset neighbors. (NSFW?!) Of course the media attention as well as the offensive Christmas lights disappointed some residents in Denham Springs, but companies who sell Christmas lights and run PPC campaigns on Google and Bing were furious about unrelated queries popping up during the busiest time of the year.

Those advertisers who worked hard on their negative keywords weren't able to predict a query like "middle finger Christmas lights" or "middle finger light display" and add it to their list of negatives. As the story became viral, millions of people around the world began to search for it, causing hundreds and thousands of dollars in loss for the advertisers.

In today's world almost anything can become viral and attract millions of people to use new search queries that didn't exist before. One day you are getting a great CPA selling trips to the Gangnam District in Seoul, the next day millions of people are searching for an addictive music video.

It is impossible to predict how a new product, celebrity, news story, or viral video can trigger your ads. But it is important to detect unrelated traffic early and save your account before it runs out of money. Here are five tips we recommend when working on your AdWords or Bing Ads account:

1. Don't leave your account on autopilot. I know a lot of business owners who built their PPC account a long time ago and left it as is. Over time some of the targeted keywords become obsolete, change their meaning, or attract unrelated queries. Even today potential clients ask me if it's possible to have a one-time account build-out and leave it as is. (The answer is no!)
2. Pay close attention to your metrics such as cost per click, click-through rate, and cost per acquisition. Viral queries normally have lower cost, lower CTR, and no conversions. Go to the query report if you see an unexpected increase in traffic and decrease in cost and click-through rate.
3. Make sure your top queries perform roughly equally day by day with no interruptions or sudden drops. Viral keywords can "eat" your daily budget and leave no room for normal queries to perform.
4. Check your search queries at least twice a week. I highly recommend checking your queries regularly using QueryStream. Our software helps to detect new queries, unrelated queries, and new negative keyword candidates.
5. Set irrelevant viral queries as negative keywords. If you're a WordStream customer you can use the 20-Minute PPC Work Week to add the negatives our software suggests to you. WordStream software can detect new keywords which are affecting your account. New viral phrases will be picked up and brought to your attention when you log into the software.  

Have you ever been burned by a sudden spike of viral keywords in your PPC campaign?

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

You may view the latest post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WordStreamBlog/~3/suNnbtEaFdQ/detecting-trending-keywords-ppc You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

[Build Backlinks Online] April Mozscape Index Is Live

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'April Mozscape Index Is Live'


Posted by bradfriedman

Hello Mozzers, and happy Monday!

My name is Brad Friedman, Technical Lead for Mozscape, and I'm happy to
announce that we've released a brand new Mozscape index for April. You can find
fresh, new data across all of our apps. Check out Open Site Explorer, the
Mozbar, your PRO campaigns, and the Mozscape API.

We've reduced our index crawl time to just eleven days for this release! Thanks
to our Big Data wizards on the processing team,Douglas VojirandMartin York, for
improving the freshness of our metrics! You can read more details on our
technical improvements in this post from February.

We started processing this index on Wednesday, April 10, so the metrics will
reflect crawl data from the end of March and the first week of April.

Here are the numbers for this latest index:


88,973,525,592 (88 billion) URLs

9,077,621,093 (9.1 billion) Subdomains

161,124,038 (161 million) Root Domains

887,067,310,285 (887 billion) Links

Followed vs. Nofollowed


2.15% of all links found were nofollowed

56.0% of nofollowed links are internal

44.0% are external



Rel Canonical - 15.08% of all pages use a rel=canonical tag

The average page has 76 links on it


65.05 internal links

11.02 external links




And these are the correlations with Google's US search results:


Page Authority - 0.36

Domain Authority - 0.19

MozRank - 0.24

Linking Root Domains - 0.30

Total Links - 0.25

External Links - 0.29




All this delicious data! What a great way to start off the week, huh?

Follow our planned update schedule on our Mozscape calendar, and you can check
out the metrics on our previous releases here.

We're happy to answer your questions or read your feedback! Feel free to leave
your comments here on this thread, or you can reach me on Twitter
(@brad_friedman).
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[Build Backlinks Online] 10 Lessons from the Guest Blogging School of Hard Knocks

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, '10 Lessons from the Guest
Blogging School of Hard Knocks'

In this post-Panda and Penguin search landscape, one much talked-about topic
when SEO specialists gather together for a virtual drink is guest blogging.
Guest blogging, as you may already have read from several different sources, is
perceived as a...

...

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[Build Backlinks Online] Measuring and Increasing the ROI of Your Content Resources

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Measuring and Increasing the ROI
of Your Content Resources'


Posted by Mike Pantoliano

Let me cut right to the chase. Do you want to know the value of your content
marketing efforts? Want this report?



Read on and I'll tell ya!

Calculating the real ROI

With so much emphasis often put on the traffic generation potential of a good
content marketing strategy, I want to focus this post on measuring and
increasing the return on the (sometimes sneakily large) investment. Some common
goals you'll hear surrounding a content marketing strategy include generating
traffic for generic terms, increasing social shares, and developing the brand's
authority (measured by increases in branded traffic, or some other indicator).
In the right circumstances, all of these are nice metrics for the relevant
stakeholders in the organization, but they're all just proxies for measuring the
growth of a business. They're measurements of the means, not the end.

The impetus for a lot of what I'll be talking about in this post comes from
Josh Braaten's post on the Google Analytics Blog a few months ago titled "How to
Prove the Value of Content Marketing with Multi-Channel Funnels". Josh talks
practically about how to measure the business impact of traffic that first
experiences your site via a page that isn't directly selling a product or
service to a consumer. Think: the "How to get into fly-fishing" article written
by the outdoors retailer that sells fly-fishing poles, or even the "How to
measure the effectiveness of content marketing" article written by the guy
working for a company that's doing a two day kick-ass web marketing conference
in Boston on May 20th & 21st :). Indeed, these content pages aren't selling a
product or service, but they are selling the brand, the "purchase" made by the
consumer is everlasting trust; and it has a really low conversion rate.

The necessary analysis for this gets difficult because it is so rare for a user
to make the jump from discovery/informational stage to transactional stage in
one sitting. Hence the need for multi-channel analysis: we need to take a
conversion, look back at all of the interactions that have taken place leading
up to that conversion, and assign some amount of credit to those channels that
often show up toward the beginning of the conversion path. Social networks and
the content that usually ranks for generic keywords are most often found in
these early interactions. They are inherently 'openers' or 'exposers'.

So, now that we've covered the theory, let's look at measuring that ROI.

Expanding upon Josh Braaten's multi-contentfunnels

Everyone interested in what I've covered above should absolutely read Josh's
post. In it, Josh walks you through how to create a report within Google
Analytics' Multi-Channel Funnels that classifies users by the page type for
which they first interacted (based upon landing page).



Custom channel creation is a lot like creating an advanced segment in GA



The top conversions path report - seen here displaying a pretty convoluted
conversion path for one particular conversion.

I'm going to offer a slightly different direction, but they both accomplish the
goal of getting value out of our visit data. Instead of comparing content
sections against each other, let's instead compare it against our other channels
like direct, referral, organic, and paid.

Let's do a step-by-step walkthrough

Head on down to the multi-channel funnels reports.



Make a copy of the basic channel grouping template.



Include traffic based on landing page URL. Hopefully you've got your resource
center, blog, or content home on a neatly identifiable path in the URL. If you
don't, you may have to go the route of declaring page-level custom variables.



Drag it to the top. The order at which you put these channels is important
because GA will go down the line until a match is found, then stop. If we leave
our Resource Center channel at the bottom, the channels above will take a ton of
visitors first because our rules aren't mutually exclusive.



Though not completely related to this topic, I'd also suggest separating your
organic channel into branded, unbranded, and (not provided).



Because of that importance of ordering, if you put (not provided) first and
branded second, the final organic group will necessarily consist of unbranded
traffic.



You can create this segment with a neatly crafted regex of your brand name and
other branded terms.

Finally, let GA calculate things out, and voila!



What can we learn from the above?

Well, it should be pretty clear that under the traditional model of last click
analysis, our resource center is under-valued. This much is obvious by the
disparity in last click conversions and conversion value compared with assisted
conversions and conversion value. Not only that, but the "Assisted/Last Click or
Direct Conversions" ratio (6.62 in the screenshot) tells us that this content is
acting in an assist role more than any other channel we have (the higher the
number, the more likely it's an 'opener', not a 'closer' - those trend toward
zero).

When we look at assisted conversion numbers, we CANNOT say that our resource
center content is now directly responsible for $26k in revenue; that would not
be quite fair using this model. But our content did have its hand in a lot more
conversions than we may have originally assumed.

Now, as for this channel's relative contribution to the bottom line compared
with other channels, well, yes, it's still a lot smaller. But consider that this
particular website's resource center is actually quite small, especially
compared with the size of the rest of the site. Knowing how many pages are in a
resource center makes it pretty easy to apply simple math to determine what each
new page is roughly worth. Or you could choose to do deeper analysis into
specific pages or sections within. Again, I point to Josh Braaten's post for
more on that.

But at the end of the day if you know that each new page added to the resource
center has an assist in $X worth of conversions per year, justifying expansion
becomes a lot easier.

A bonus tip for content marketers

So that was measuring the ROI of a content marketing strategy. But I've
actually got a tip for increasing ROI that I'd like to share.

Our content strategies are targeted at the generic keywords that more often
than not are queries that align with the user's information-seeking intent. If
we had our way, the path would go like this:

Kitten mittens purchasing decision

A user searches "my cat's too noisy" and lands on your site's blog post "10
ways to deal with a noisy cat."

The user reads and is very happy with your content. In that content, you
suggest "kitten mittens," a product that you sell.

The seed is planted in the user's mind, and upon deciding that they're ready to
buy, the user either searches for your brand name, that post again, or the
"kitten mittens" product, all of which lead back to your site.



Nightmare scenario time: what if they searched for "kitten mittens" and you
don't rank for that term? Well, your content has done all the hard work, but
your high-ranking competitor swoops in and gets the purchase. This must be
corrected. But how?

Remarketing

It doesn't matter what remarketing tool you use (this would be super easy with
GA's remarketing tool - here I wrote a post on it!), put the user above in a
"noisy cat owner" list, and target them with "kitten mitten" ads around the web.



Thanks for reading, I hoped you learned something!

Let me know what you think in the comments or on Twitter, @MikeCP. Don't forget
that Distilled is running our search marketing conference, SearchLove, in Boston
on May 20th and 21st!
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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'The Future According to Larry Page: Outlook Lazy'

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On the Q1 2013 earnings call last week, Larry Page spent a lot of his time taking about the future – a future that will not be social, as Page might have had us believe in the past. He didn't mention Google+ once on the call, and social media only came up insofar as YouTube is social. That's a switch!

So what does define the future of Google? The unifying theme just might be laziness. Almost every Google venture that Page spent time talking about is designed to cater to our increasing laziness and impatience as a society.

The web used to be a playground for tech nerds, but now it’s for everybody, including people who know nothing about technology. As tech gets easier and more accessible, 5% of people mourn the loss of the control, but the rest of us lazy bums love it.

Talking Is Easier Than Typing: Voice Commands and Google Glass

Larry Page opened the call by reiterating the basic mission statement of Google, as represented by Google Now: "Our goal is to get you the right information at just the right time … without you having to ask first." And what's the right time? Instantly, if not yesterday. One of the ways that Google is trying to get ads "answers" to you faster is by aggressively pursuing the world of voice commands. "Voice commands are going to be increasingly important," Page said. "It is much less hassle to talk than type."

With voice recognition technology in mobile devices – including phones, tablets and Google Glass devices – Google is hoping to shorten the time between question (the thought in your brain) and answer, by creating environments with "no typing needed."

"In the future, we’ll all be amazed that computing involved fishing in pockets and purses," Page said. Pulling your phone out of your pocket? Typing a query into a search box? What a waste of time! In the future we'll be way too lazy for that.

Faster Is Better: The Real Reason for Google Fiber

Another venture that got a lot of air time on the earnings call was Google Fiber, Google's foray into providing high-speed Internet service at speeds up to 100 times faster than typical broadband. It's not the first time Google has gotten into a business line that is barely related to its core search product – Larry Page himself cited Gmail as a project that was way outside its core strengths when they launched it.

But, Page said, Google pursues these crazy speculative projects because "incremental improvements are guaranteed to be obsolete over time, especially in technology." Companies that only incrementally improve a single technology tend to eventually be replaced by more radical innovations made by other, newer companies. Google is trying to bet against that kind of obsolescence by entering new spaces where there is little competition.

But wait – so, why fiber? The competition there is very entrenched. CFO Patrick Pichette seemed to reveal why they are pursuing the Google Fiber project on Thursday's earnings call:

Speed matters today. When you wait for 3 seconds to get your YouTube video today with your current provider, that is a terrible answer. And we think that fiber, and the services we offer in Kansas City today actually goes a long way to solving a lot of today's frustrations, independent of tomorrow's.

Load times are Google's problem right now, and in order to keep growing revenues, Google needs to bet on a future where its content and the accompanying advertisements load very fast, because that is what its increasingly impatient user base demands. Google doesn't want to have to depend on third-party Internet service providers to deliver its offerings. So it's stepping in to ensure that Internet speeds are as fast as possible. (As AJ Kohn pointed out earlier this year, increasing Internet use is Google's master plan.)

Self-Driving Cars: K.I.T.T. in Real Life

Then, of course, we have the specter of the driverless car. The point is safety – get drunk at the bar? Your car is your designated driver! But you can't deny that being chauffeured by your own car will also make your life much easier. No more pesky navigating, steering, or checking of mirrors. You can just sit back, enjoy the ride and play with your phone – maybe check Google+?

Automatic transmissions were one step toward making driving easier, and some people prefer a standard transmission precisely because they prefer that greater sense of control. As always, greater ease of use tends to be coupled with loss of control. You can bet those folks aren't lining up for the beta on the Google car.

Unbreakable Phones That Don't Need Charging?

There was also a weird aside from Larry Page about how, when it comes to mobile, "battery life is a challenge for most people – you shouldn't need to carry a charger around with you to make it through the day." He added, "And when you drop your phone, it shouldn't shatter." Charging your phone? Replacing it when you break it? Annoying inconveniences! Sure, nobody likes doing that stuff. So is Google developing an unbreakable phone with superpowered battery life? Sign me up.

Enhanced Campaigns, Making Advertising “Really Simple”

As Google's main cash cow, AdWords needs to adapt to an ever lazier user base as well. Speaking of Google Play, Larry Page said "It's really important that our products work seamlessly, whatever device you are using at the moment." He then transitioned into talking about AdWords:

In the same way, we need to make advertising across devices really simple for our customers. With separate campaigns for desktop and mobile, this makes arduous work for advertisers and agencies, which means mobile opportunities often get missed. So in February, we launched Enhanced Campaigns,  a significant upgrade to AdWords. Our goal is simple: to enable advertisers to focus on their audience and their message while we dynamically adapt their campaigns across multiple devices.

Again, the story is fast and easy. The vast majority of advertisers don't want to deal with the extra work of setting up multiple campaigns for different devices and environments, even if separate campaigns give you finer tuning and more control. So Google is catering more to the lowest common denominator than to its power users on the more advanced end of its user base. Similar to how WYSIWYG's make web publishing more accessible because you don't have to know HTML, Enhanced Campaigns make AdWords easier for people who don't have the expertise to handle multiple, hyper-targeted PPC campaigns.

The Future of Google: Yea or Nay?

Do you like the direction Google is moving in, making everything easier and faster? Or are you more the old-fashioned type, preferring to take things slow?

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

You may view the latest post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WordStreamBlog/~3/FN4KcLyKp0E/future-according-to-larry-page You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com