Whenever I counsel clients about the use of social media, I always advise they speak to their target audience and figure out what messaging (and channel) would appeal to them.

I’m not sure if the manufacturer of Motrin followed that advice, but judging by the enormous backlash the company is facing over it’s new Motrin “Mom-Alogue” video, I suspect they didn’t speak to a single mother (at least, they didn’t speak to any that use Twitter).

Taking a look at the negative Twitter conversations surrounding #motrinmom demonstrates that Motrin is, in just a few short hours, facing a huge reputation disaster–initiated by the very audience Motrin hoped to target, “Mama Bloggers.”

Just look how fast this online reputation crisis came to a boil:

Now, it’s possible that there are many mothers that find the ad to be fun and light-hearted, but they’re the vocal minority–heavily out-voiced by those that took offense at the video.

What should Motrin do now? Perhaps follow my 3 steps for apologizing: be sincere, be transparent, and be consistent. Motrin needs to quickly apologize–before this reaches the mainstream media–and then do some damage control–perhaps find the most vocal detractors and bring them on board to quickly story-board an alternative video.

What can the rest of us learn from this? Never assume you know your target audience. Never assume that just because you’ve created something “viral” that the sentiment will always be positive. And, always build your social media campaign with some input from those who represent ALL target audience.

(Thanks to NextInstinct for the tip)

Pilgrim’s Partners: Is a blogger attacking your company without you knowing? Monitor your online reputation with Andy Beal’s Trackur–try it for free!

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Motrin Faces Twitter Headache Over New Video Campaign

I was relieved to see the following reaction from the first day’s crowd when PubCon’s Brett Tabke asked if people had seen an increase in their business and about 50% of the crowd raised their hands. When asked if they felt that it would increase in the coming year it looked like about 75% of the folks (out of hundreds and hundreds) were positive. Only about 4 or so people were willing to admit they were worried. Are the numbers skewed? Of course they are. They are numbers. The idea is that at least people want to ACT positive. One of the ways to get busy is social media / marketing / networking.

The first session I attended was about “Understanding the Complex Social Marketing Playing Field”. Given that these sessions are all of one hour and 15 minutes long you figure that there will be limits to what you can take away. Well, it was certainly a bit like drinking from a fire hose. While there was a boat load of details there was a simple recurring theme: be genuine and plan. So social media isn’t just some panacea that anyone and everyone can take advantage of? The panel made it clear that while many try it, not many succeed. Here’s why:

1. Too salesy – this is about relationships and once you look to promote, sell and then close someone you have more than likely violated some unwritten community rule and you can then become a social media pariah. People want relationships. Transactions come from that not the other way around

2. Inconsistent effort – social media requires inordinate amounts of time to do well. If you are going to step in you better step in whole-heartedly. Doing social media and then not attending to it is like the web site that hasn’t been updated in 2 years……..it does more harm than good so consider what your limits are

3. Lose control of profiles – like domain squatting, profile squatting exists. Man, it is a very strange world we live in but you need to keep an eye on this but it does happen and it’s up to you to make sure you protect it aggressively

4. Lack of goals and objectives – If you are getting involved in social media just to say that you do it, then don’t do it. Have distinct goals and work toward them with your efforts. If you ‘rabbit trail’ social media you may get so lost you can’t get back no matter how many bread crumbs you leave

5. Unrealistic expectations – Li Evans of KeyRelevance made the point that social media is not a quick fix for your marketing plan. Is there anything that is a quick fix for a marketing plan? If there is please let me know immediately.

Well, here’s what I walked away with. The search industry is 10 plus years old and people are still trying to fully grasp it. Social media and networking is literally just starting to mainstream in the past couple of years after being more confined to the younger crowd as a communication tool on steroids. Now it’s becoming a business tool. We are just at the start of this thing. It’s the Wild West again. There is so much to learn and to understand. I wasn’t sure of social media/marketing/networking before I got here. Now I am. It demands attention but it also screams out for good business sense.

This is going to be very interesting.

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Last week, we took a look at Facebook’s financials and wondered if the social networking giant is headed for financial ruin, despite—or even because of—118% worldwide growth, 32% US growth (monthly unique visitors). Many commentators argued that any company would be overjoyed with even 32% growth. Unfortunately, that kind of thinking is the exact thinking that has brought Facebook to this point—and now Facebook’s ad rates have fallen 50%.

AllFacebook reports that both the CPM and the minimum spend for some Facebook have dropped 50% since October of last year:

At the time Facebook homepage advertisements attracted a $10 CPM and required a $50,000 minimum investment. Since then it appears that Facebook’s ad rates have dropped significantly and the minimum ad spend has also dropped to $10,000.

Now, how could 32% growth in the US cause this? Of course, it’s entirely possible that it didn’t. But let’s take a look at the numbers to understand just how good—or bad—that growth rate is.

How can more than doubling your worldwide user base be a bad thing? Well, when you don’t have a solid plan to monetize some or even most of those users, when advertisers simply aren’t spending as much to reach those audiences—when the growth of your most potentially profitable audiences is outpaced by the growth of the audiences that are marginally or just plain not profitable.

The US is not the most profitable audience in terms of online advertiser spend per Internet user, as TechCrunch calculated earlier this year, but it’s among the top 5. So, because of sheer size and advertising spend per user, the US audience is an important monetary base for Facebook.

And yes, year over year, the US Facebook audience (in monthly unique visitors) increased by 10 million, from 31M to 41M, or 32%. The worldwide audience, on the other hand, more than doubled from 74M to 161M, or 118%.

This means that over that year, the proportion of Facebook users in the US went from 41.9% to 25.5%—a drop of 16.4 percentage points, or a drop of 39% percent in one of their most profitable markets.

So 32% growth isn’t always something to envy.

What can Facebook do to reverse this trend? I think the best route would be to work to increase their user bases and advertising revenue in other profitable markets at a rate proportionate with worldwide growth. The UK, Denmark and Australia actually have a higher average online advertising spend per Internet user, so increasing their user bases could help to offset costs by less profitable user bases. US growth and advertising, of course, would be good, too, as well as worldwide advertising.

What route do you think Facebook should take?

Originally posted here:
Facebook Ad Rates Fall: When 32% Growth Is Not Enough

Google is renowned for its intuitive user interface—but a lot of work goes in to making sure that Google understands exactly how its users interact with its pages, as evidenced in a blog post yesterday. And Google doesn’t just look at the user data they get from clicks or surveys—they use actual field studies.

Are actual field tests, observing users “in the wild,” necessary? Google’s Search Quality Uber Tech Lead, Daniel Russell, explains why:

people are masters of saying one thing and doing another, particularly when it comes to nearly automatic behavior. We find that searchers often turn so quickly to Google that they don’t really think too much about what they’re actually searching for.

It’s surprising, but often we’ll see people trying to find out something about a topic, but then never actually mention the topic itself. That is, there’s often a big discrepancy between what they’ll tell me (the human observer) they’re trying to do, and the search terms they enter into Google. One person I shadowed for the day spent ten minutes trying to find the schedule of the ferry that runs between San Francisco and Larkspur, but somehow only thought of adding the word “ferry” much later in their search. . . .

Memories of your own behavior are also notoriously unreliable. People’s search behavior in the lab is often different than when they’re at home or at work. This is a natural (and expected) side effect of lab studies: people will work especially hard to please a researcher.

If we ask them to search for a pair of brown shoes they’d like to buy for themselves, in the lab they’ll find the first pair that seems reasonable and then stop, satisfied. If it was real, they would go on and spend more time. We still do lab studies, but we know what to watch for, and what to ignore.

Not the most heartening observation of human intelligence I’ve ever heard…

Anyway, Google also uses tools like eyetracking in this example (the red dot indicates the user’s gaze):

Google also puts this data to use, such as in the overhaul of their Advanced Search page.

What do you do to learn more about how your users interact with your site?

Google Understands User Behavior

Woohoo it’s Friday?

Let’s celebrate with today’s Picks:

• A Russian company is suing Google for $3 billion, claiming AdSense infringes on its patent. Whatever.
• The recession is going to reduce the growth rate of local online advertising from 47% growth this year to just 8% next year. Ouch!
• E-consultancy has advice for publishers looking to improve their site search. Noted.
• Live Search Maps has added Photosynth images.
• How cool is the new “Reactions” feature, just added to Blogger?

Pilgrim’s Partners: Is a blogger attacking your company without you knowing? Monitor your online reputation with Andy Beal’s Trackur–try it for free!

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