Internet Marketing, SEO, SEM, & Social Media Blog from Webbed Marketing

National Popular Vote Had a Whole New Meaning in the 2008 Presidential Election

At Webbed Marketing, we like numbers - all kinds of stats, metrics, comparisons – anything showing detailed results.  A year ago, we developed a “scorecard” to help measure online presence for our clients. The scorecard is made up of 30 different metrics illustrating the visibility of a site/page in the search engines (SEO) and the visibility of a “brand” in online conversations (social media outlets).  It’s our Webbed-O-Meter 2.0 online buzz measurement tool on steroids.

It was only natural that we evaluated final scorecards for the 2008 Presidential Election final candidates: Barack Obama and John McCain. (We look at numbers only – no personal political opinions found here.) After closely analyzing all 30 metrics from links to the site to mentions on MySpace and in blogs, there was a trend. Barack Obama led every metric by at least 15% for an overall average of 40%+ over McCain. Even our own Webbed-O-Meter tool measured an 80 for Obama and a 67 for McCain (out of a total score of 100).

It’s a fact that Obama’s Facebook page is still the most popular profile with 3,010,722 supporters while McCain only attracted 618,189 supporters.

Could we have predicted the outcome of the election based on the pure volume of the online conversations about the election and its candidates?  Can we draw a correlation to the percentage of buzz Obama received above McCain to the percentage of the popular vote Obama gained? 

Probably not since we are not measuring the tone (negative or positive) of the online communications; however; the results certainly illustrate the impact the Internet had in the 2008 Presidential election and will have in all future elections.

- Amy Marshall

Launch of Webbed-o-Meter 2.0

The Webbed-O-Meter 2.0 picks up where the original free online buzz measurement tool left off: providing free access to a buzz metrics tool which can tell you how much buzz is being generated by your website – a veritable buzz barometer of the good, the bad and the ugly in terms of the content which is currently promoting your brand. Our tool, which is the first buzz metrics tool of its kind, uses a sophisticated algorithm to measure 16 different media outlets and social bookmarking sites to generate a sum buzz score.

Chances are most of the online content about your organization has never been approved by your VP of Marketing, CEO or legal counsel. The online buzz which is generated by consumers not only outweighs "official" content by sheer volume, it also is produced and distributed more quickly and probably enjoys some search engine benefits that official content does not. Every website, product and online personality has a fan base, and critics. The fact is that most brands aren’t even aware of the buzz that is being Tweeted, Digged and Stumbled about them.

The Webbed-O-Meter is just the first step in taking control of your brand’s online buzz. Once you have a solid indication of your brand’s current buzz measurement, it is time to take control of the conversation. This is where Webbed Marketing comes in. We can provide you with the tools and experience needed to steer the conversation in the direction that you want it to go. Learn how at www.webbedmarketing.com.

But enough talk. Type a URL into the Webbed-O-Meter 2.0 and calculate your online buzz measurement.

2008 Presidential Candidates Battle for Online Dominance

I have seen a lot of posts recently about which candidate has more of an online presence. As Webbed Marketing's Social Media Darling, I am very interested in this comparison. We track online presence for all our clients so I decided to put Barack Obama and John McCain through my own test, WM style.

First I ran the two candidate's websites through our Webbed-o-Meter.  Obama's website scored a 97.8 out of 100 points. McCain's website scored a 74.4 out of 100 points. Obama's website definitely seems to be generating more buzz, being passed around more by consumers and fans and is being seen more on social networks.

Let's see if I am right...

To see why Obama's website scored higher on the Webbed-o-Meter than McCain's website, I looked at which popular social networks the candidates were active on.

Barack Obama is a member of:

• Facebook - 2,167,874 supporters
• FriendFeed
• Twitter - 100,787  followers
• MySpace - 726,110 friends
• YouTube - 102389 subscribers
• Flickr - 7,160 contacts
• LinkedIn - over 500 connections
• Digg

John McCain is a member of:

• Facebook - 581,002 supporters
• MySpace - 177,859
  
• Twitter - 3,346 followers
• YouTube - not available

Obama has over 2 million supporters on Facebook, four times McCain's supporters. Obama's MySpace page is modern and follows the typical MySpace layout, showing friends, comments, interests, etc. McCain's MySpace page has been reformated to look like a one page site with a video, an ad you can grab and links to view friends, send a message, make a comment or view the blog. Obama also has over 30 times the number of followers that McCain has on Twitter. McCain's YouTube page has a similar lackluster to his MySpace page - a few videos and favorites, but no friends, comments or bulletins box. Obama also has a presence on FriendFeed, Flickr, LinkedIn, Digg, to name just a few, where McCain's presence is lacking. This helps explain Obama's higher Webbed-o-Meter score. He is on more social  networks, generating more content and connections.

I recently came aross a tool called Twinfluence that shows the Twitter members with the most influence/reach based on friends, followers, frequency of tweets. Twinfluence ranks Barack Obama as the most influencial tweeter, with a reach of over 8 million.

When comparing the sites on Compete,  the candidates start out about equal in September of 2007 but you can see by January of 2008 Obama has taken a lead with more unique visitors than McCain. For the year (Sept 2007 - Sept 2008) Obama has had 5,538,460 unique visitors to his website while McCain has had 3,117,691 unique visitors. 

It looks like BarackObama.com has won out over JohnMcCain.com for now. It will be interesting to see how this social media comparison affects the election results.

I will continue to follow these numbers over the next few weeks to see how things fluctuate leading up to the election. Does online dominance equal electoral domination? Or does the internet not reflect true life? What are your predictions?! 

by Rebecca Roebuck

Hints, Allegations and Things Left Unsaid…About Brendan Fraser

I was sitting in my favorite chair the other night (7 days after seeing The Dark Night) and an ad for one of the local news stations came on the air.  The 10pm anchor was doing a promo for the upcoming news cast, and, as you know, they like to tease your interest in order to keep you tuned in.  The promo said, “A new summer blockbuster set to release may slow down Batman or at least give him a serious run for his money”.   Having seen and loved the new Batman, I was intrigued by the tease.  I finished up some WM work and settled in to watch the news to find out what movie I would have to see next. Ladies and Gents, I was severely disappointed when, after watching 36 minutes of news, they finally revealed the aforementioned slayer of the Bat. 

It was Brendan Fraser.

Give me a break! The third (and hopefully final) installment of The Mummy movie series, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, was launched on August 1st. According to Yahoo Movies, the first two movies in the series grossed $155 million and $202 million, respectively, for a combined $357 million. That is $37 million less than The Dark Knight grossed in its first 3 weeks.  Yolanda and Gabe from Fox 28 were successful in teasing me with their viral hook, which had me on the internet the next morning to research their claim. 

So let me demonstrate the “viral effect” that took place here.  After hearing the tease from the newscast, I decided to research the claim, utilizing the endless resources of the internet.  I first hit Yahoo Movies homepage to see if any of the critics had posted their reviews of the movie.  I regrettably watched a trailer or two on Y! Movies, and then moved on to the websites of some reputable movie critics.  At this point, I hadn’t seen or read anything spectacular about this movie, so I went to YouTube and found the ReelzChannel video channel.  Reelz does exit interviews with movie goers who attend the opening night of a movie premier.  The people on the street had some not-so-nice things to say about The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

“The last time I saw a movie of that quality was Revenge of the Nerds 5.”

“It was horrible, just horrible.”

“I was expecting it to be a lot worse, but was pleasantly surprised.”

“The welfare version of Indiana Jones”

“Brendan Fraser, stop with the movies.”

With all of these “glowing” reviews, the “viral effect” has resulted in negative press for this movie; it has definitely registered with the box office.  The movie has only grossed $40 million during the opening weekend, and the critics, both professional and amateur, have not been kind to this movie with their reviews. 

So what does this say about how the “viral effect” can move your business?  Using this case study, it can absolutely kill your momentum.  Your future customers will research your product, talk to friends and family, read about your company, search for product reviews, etc.  The “viral effect” can either work in your favor or decidedly against you.  You have to make sure that you’re ahead of the viral curve to keep your business on track and keep people talking about you in a positive light.

-Rob Ament

Serenity Now!

Have you ever heard of the TV series “Firefly”?  I would venture to say that if you are a sci-fi fan, you are familiar with the show.  The show was created by writer Joss Whedon who is also known for his shows “Angel” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”.  Firefly was picked up by Fox in 2002, but Fox cancelled the show before the full season could be aired.  Firefly then went to DVD, where the series picked up a huge following.

I was introduced to the series by my friend Doug.  He told me watch all 14 episodes and then pick up the movie from the video store.  A movie?  From a cancelled Sci-FI, TV show?   As you can see, I was slightly skeptical; it’s not every day you see a TV series that was pulled from the air in mid season make it to the big screen.  Respecting Doug’s opinion, I watched the series and movie. I have to say I was hooked. 

After Fox’s arguably premature cancellation of the show, the “fandwagon” exploded.  People wrote letters, emails, blog posts, and form posts to rail against the trigger happy response by the Fox executives.  Fans calling themselves Browncoats (it’s from the show) pooled together and purchased a full page ad in Variety magazine, protesting the early exit from the Fox lineup.  When Fox ignored their pleas, fans wrote to rival network UPN asking them to pick up the series for a second season.   To appease the fan base, the series was then released to DVD, but this only fueled the viral fire.  People launched fan sites, Firefly communities, and even a documentary detailing their love for the series.   After seeing the craze over the Firefly series, movie executives realized there was a market for a movie, which was written and produced by creator Joss Whedon.  Serenity was released in 2005, and the cult following responded.

 Ok, so I know what you’re thinking.  Sci-Fi fans are not your average breed.  From the early days of the Trekky conventions to the mega fans showing up in full Star Wars gear, this genre of movie fans are a cut above the rest.  However, the “viral effect” cannot be ignored.  Three years after the DVD set was released, Firefly was still among the top 10 grossing series on Amazon.com.  Today, the series is still the top ranking Sci-Fi TV series sold on Amazon.  And the movie, that technically should not have been made, grossed over $25 million, with fans hosting special screenings to raise $65,000 for Whedon’s charity.

Firefly is a great example of people taking a passion to the next level and moving the viral bar in their favor.  Providing a product or service that people can get excited about is the first step to creating a viral effect.  It doesn’t matter if you are selling pencils or backpack rockets, if people dig your product they will generate the buzz for you.  And in the midst of the information age, they can spread the virus faster than ever!

- Robt Ament

Go Viral or Go Home

I have been known to enjoy a good movie or two, and the recent releases of several summer blockbusters have demonstrated the effect of viral marketing as a major bullet in the gun of the big picture studios.  Over the next several days, I am going to present a few case studies for your consideration, demonstrating the key part that viral marketing plays in the advertising of a product.

Prior to the release of The Dark Knight on July 18th, the movie industry was buzzing over this powerful summer blockbuster.  But the one facet of viral verbosity that caught my ear was the role of The Joker, played by Heath Ledger.  The word from the screen was that his performance was “convincing”, “Oscar worthy”, leaving his co-stars in awe.  This hit the press about a week before the movie premiered and was reinforced by comments from the cast of the movie. 

As you know, Heath Ledger died of a drug overdose on January 22nd, 2008, nearly six months before the movie was released.  Around the time of his death, Google Trends tracked nearly 100 million searches on his name, with searches originating from all over the world.  As you can imagine, a posthumous Oscar Nomination is an attractive “feel good story” for not only the academy, but for the people who paid the $158+ million dollars on opening weekend to become the top premier grossing movie of all time.

Don’t get me wrong, the performance was spectacular, and what little I know about Oscar nominations, he definitely deserves a nomination.  But as a marketeer, you have to wonder what influence the “viral effect” had on the success of this movie.  Was it the quality of this film that made this the $300+ million monster it has become? How about the advertising effort (from TV spots to alternative advertising in New York City)? Or was it the viral effect of Ledger’s untimely death, coupled with the viral accolades from trusted movie critics, supported by the viral nature of the Oscar nomination, grounded by the lingering buzz left by the first movie in the series (Batman Begins)?

I would argue all of the above.  The 4 P’s of marketing were in full force for this movie launch, but the 5th P, the voice of People, may have been the loudest pillar of this great marketing story.  Stay tuned for a few more examples of the “viral effect” in the entertainment industry.

-Rob Ament

Blog Friends is closing

Those who use Facebook and blog may have been familiar with the Blog Friends application. It was a great tool that let you keep up with friends blog posts and find posts based on your interests. Then you could add the application to your Facebook profile to share your favorite blog posts with all your friends. You could also add your own blogs to share post, track stats and watch posts spread virally across the Blog Friends network.

When I logged into Facebook today I saw this message. We will miss you Blog Freinds and look forward to Buzzspotr!

"Blog Friends is closing

Dear Blog Friend, We're very sorry to announce that Blog Friends is to close down.

When i-together raised some seed funding back in the summer of 2007, Benjie, Jof and I fully anticipated taking Blog Friends onto great things, and we worked as hard as we could to make that happen.

Although it appears simple on the surface, Blog Friends is actually an unusually complex and resource-intensive application to maintain and grow. It also is pretty original in the way it combines your extended, fuzzy social network and your interests as filters for your blog recommendation River.

Because Blog Friends was so original and quite ambitious, we had no way of projecting accurately just how many users we could welcome before our solution began to creak. We hoped for 100,000. It turned out that 20,000 was closer to the mark. And now that we have around 27,000 users signed up, Blog Friends has been brought pretty much to its knees (as you will have noticed from the increasing frequency of the error messages you may have been seeing).

At the same time, the way that Blog Friends is currently tied into the Facebook Platform means we have been at the mercy of Facebook's frequent modifications of their Platform specifications, and that has also been another disabling factor for us.

What is needed is a complete rewrite of Blog Friends, one that makes it properly scaleable and independent of Facebook. As you can imagine, this is a huge undertaking and unfortunately we don't have the resource or money to do this; we have never inflicted any advertising on you our users, so we haven't made a penny in revenue from Blog Friends.

We're shutting down, as of today.

Jof, Benjie and I would like to offer you our heartfelt thanks for all your support and encouragement, and our sincere apologies for the annoyance of all those error messages and now the complete cessation of the Blog Friends service.

We had an amazing time building Blog Friends with you, and we have learned so much—about technology and business, but mostly about ourselves, each other, and all you wonderful people.

Finally, some of you may know that we have been working since the New Year on a sister service to Blog Friends, Buzzspotr.com, which we hoped to launch quickly, create a "buzz", raise funding, then get back to work on rebuilding Blog Friends from the ground up. However, we have recently had to refocus on our contracting work (see brainbakery.com and weaverluke.com for details) to support ourselves before being able to launch Buzzspotr.

We still hope that Blog Friends will rise from the ashes, and that Buzzspotr will see the light of day, before too very long. If you would like to keep tabs on our progress, you can do so at i-together.com, weaverluke.com and brainbakery.com blogs, and on twitter: benjiegillam, jofarnold and weaverluke.

Thanks again and we hope your Blog Friending was happy.

Luke, Jof and Benjie—the Blog Friends team"

Presidential Candidates Battle for Online Buzz

Hillary Clinton? John McCain? Barack Obama? Ohio based marketing and media agency to offer free online conference to examine who has the most online buzz.

Leading up to the key presidential primary in Ohio, one organization is offering a free online conference to look at the roles bloggers, webmasters and online influencers are playing in presidential politics.

The conference takes place on March 4th, 2008, the day of the Ohio and Texas primaries. There is no cost to attend the online conference and registration is available on the Webbed Marketing website.

“This is the first presidential election for the ‘MySpace Generation,’” said Bill Balderaz, Chief Innovation Officer of Webbed Marketing, an agency that helps organizations measure, create and track online buzz. “This election’s youngest voters don’t know a world without the Internet. And since the last election, consumer generated content mediums like blogs and social networks have gone from being a novelty to a core way in which consumers and the media communicate with, and influence, each other.”

He predicted that many undecided voters will turn to the Internet to learn more about the candidates. “More than 100,000 MySpace Profiles mention the name ‘Hillary Clinton.’ Do a Google search on ‘John McCain’ and a Wikipedia page about McCain is the second result—only behind the official McCain site. Every hour 140 blog posts are written about Barack Obama,” Balderaz said.

“Most of this content is not created by the candidate’s team of advisors, consultants, and attorneys. It is created by real people, who want a voice. And it’s shaping the perception we all have about the candidates,” Balderaz said. He added that among Webbed Marketing’s corporate clients, content generated by consumers is often more influential than “official” corporate marketing.

“We’re going to look closely at which candidates are generating the most buzz, and how they are doing it. We invite the media, analysts or anyone interested in the campaign to join us as we explore the relationship between online buzz and what happens in the voting booth,” Balderaz said.

According to Balderaz, Webbed Marketing will track and analyze online buzz throughout the primaries, conventions and the general election.

“Our goal is to understand how online voter behavior influences, and reflects, the behavior of real voters in the voting booth,” he said.

“For the Democrats, online buzz mirrors what the pundits tell us, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and dead even,” Balderaz said, explaining that Webbed Marketing uses its Webbed-O-Meter tool to measure buzz generated by voters and the media. “Our algorithm has McCain trailing both Democrats when it comes to buzz.”

Balderaz added that the number of blog posts and online discussions about the candidates is climbing every day. “Voters want to be heard. And no longer are political discussions among voters confined to the office water cooler or corner coffee shop. Today one influential blogger can reach hundreds of other voters, instantly. Constructive debates are taking place among voters who will never meet in person, but who are using social networks to communicate.”

For more information on the presidential candidates and their online buzz, or to register for the free online conference, visit www.webbedmarketing.com.

About Webbed Marketing:
Webbed Marketing consists of a team of experts with Internet marketing experience predating the launch of Google. The firm's objective is to help businesses grow by using the Internet to reach buyers and online influencers. Webbed Marketing offers its clients full Internet marketing services including online community building, viral marketing programs, pay-per-click search management, search engine optimization and affiliate program management. To learn more about Webbed Marketing visit WebbedMarketing.com.

Broadcasting and Podcasting

Webbed Marketing has started our very own podcast. You can listen and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or on Switchpod if you do not have iTunes. We will podcast about our current projects. Be sure to check it out!

Switchpod is a useful online tool that allows you to create your own podcast feed. There are varying membership levels including a free option. You do have to deal with sponsored ads in your feed though.

There are several other options for hosting podcasts. Ourmedia.org has a great free service. You will need to register with Archive.org and SpinXpress first. SpinXpress is used to upload your media and is posted to Ourmedia and the Internet Archive. You can also upload your media to Blip.tv. It seems like a great setup so far. So now you can also check out our podcast at SpinXpress!