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No More Content for Contents Sake

September 10, 2010 //

Content Strategy, as a defined discipline and true necessity, is all about assessing (analyzing), planning (designing), constructing (building & placing), and curating (maintaining) content on a web property or properties. Wherever you have influence over your company’s / client’s content, you have to be acting in all 4 of these ways.

That’s kind of the baseline of a Content Strategist’s job description. But, let’s take a drill-down look at the “planning” and “construction” portions of this Content Strategist’s role (and yet another element of why it’s so critical to have this position in your organization, or partnering agency!), where video content is involved. You’ve already gone through your website and determined what content assets are available and their quality, as well as what’s needed and how it should be constructed (designed, branded, written, intoned, sized, etc.). You did the same process for all of your video content, right? And maybe now you realize you need new video content!

Words Go Here preaches about how Content is the currency of the web, and not as much the “King” that it’s been touted as for so many years. In terms of content as a currency, it’s all about a video’s relevance to users so they will not just appreciate it and find value in it, but so they will also recommend it to others via word of mouth, posts, links, “likes,” and embedding. In the old school (and unfortunately, still somewhat the current) SEO practices, “content is king” often translated into content for content’s sake. The idea being “If we have more pages, more microsites, more links, more posts, more tags, more mentions, more links! more! more! MORE! MORE!!!” then we’ll grow and succeed. But, if the quality of your content is bloated, written for crawlers – not people, and is difficult to wade through, it will have no value to the recipient. So, someone please help me understand how quantity matters when quality is ignored? No one’s going to care. You’re just taking up space and wasting their attention. #ContentFail.

Videos:

So, on to quality of video. Just because you, or your client, or your friend, or your friend’s friend all have a video camera (phone) on hand, doesn’t mean you’ll automatically produce some sort of P.T. Anderson masterpiece about how completely mind-blowing your current hot product is. Video is a powerful medium for translating value relative to your brand, but, should be carefully planned and constructed.

If there was one thing I learned after 4 years in television production, it’s that video production quality matters. It serves to legitimize your value proposition, separate you from your competitors, reinforce your brand, highlighting the product or service in it’s absolute best light. Pun intended.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the critical production components that are required for successful video content strategy and creation. Feel free to treat this as a “Directional Quality Checklist” resource ::

Resolution ::
- Hi Def? HD is great in that it provides the highest quality on the front end so when it’s compressed and formatted it will still look it’s best.
- However, it may be cost prohibitive depending on the size of your production (ex: a quick 1-camera interview vs. a 5-camera, 90-second TV style commercial “spot”)
- HD might also be “overkill” in terms of the end use of your video project. If you just need a little introduction clip for the sidebar of your homepage, you may just want something lightweight
Framing ::
- How intimate, personal, or grandiose do you need this to be? Think about your interview shot styles:
  - Tighter (just shoulders and head or just a “talking head”)
  - Wider (full body)
  - Mid shot (ribs to head)
  - Left, Right, or Center?
  - A mix of all of the above?
Set Lighting (and Shadowing) ::
- Soft, comfortable, inviting
- Harsh, stark, contrasting
- And remember the set backgrounds… they get their own consideration
- Wait, are you even shooting this inside? Outdoors is another animal (like a giraffe versus a lion)
Video editing ::
- Smooth transitions
- Hard cuts from shot to shot
- Fast paced edits, or longer shots
- Transition styles (please, no more star fades, a la the 80′s!)
Audio / Sound ::
- Soothing, unnoticed, spa-like and forgetful music?
- Brash, pulsing music that helps drive a point?
- Orchestral and regal, swelling to pull an emotional response?
- No music, just speaking voices?
Graphic Overlays ::
- Titles – product names, guest/host names and titles
- Corner “bugs” – sale notices, calls-to-action
- Branding registrations or trademarks
- Animations – product demos (“B-roll”) or motion diagrams
Background Setting (not just lighting), but the “stuff” ::
- Plants, chairs, candles, pictures (living room, office)
- Products, people, storefronts (retail environment)
- Blank or textured wall (a spokesperson backdrop?)
Product / Talent – Who’s the “star” here? Who’s the “hero?” Make them / it look the part ::
- For people:
  - Clothing choices (style, age, quality…)
  - Makeup and hair styling
  - Model / acting agency or someone from the company (careful there!)
- For Products:
  - Set dressing (plastic stands, clothe throws…)
  - “Before” and “After” examples, ready made
Closed Captioning – Consider your audience! ::
- Hearing impaired?
- Translations?
- If you’re not sure about this one, I recommend our earlier post on the usefulness of CC in SEO efforts.

I realize most, if not all, of you are not super familiar with these components. Sure, you may notice them from time to time while you’re watching the latest iteration of CSI, or American Idolatry, but they’re not the sorts of things you regularly lend your rapt attention. But when you need quality content, and especially when you’re paying high $$$ for it, this is a critical set of considerations to have in mind. They’re a good list for thinking though the video content construction process. And, as a word of experience, do your best to define everything on the front side. It will help remove subjectivity from the process, as well as avoid increasing expense from production “scope creep,” just the same as it can occur in web design.

Please hear me when I say you do not have to be a video producer to make your online video content work. If you have a Content Strategist, they’ll be helping you with this, and perhaps you won’t be thinking about it (wouldn’t that be nice)! But if you’re your own Content Strategy department, then be sure to vet the potential video vendors the same as you would any other provider. Do the samples they provide strike you as too frenetic, too sleepy, too corporate, etc, for what you’re looking to accomplish? What is their expected turn around time on a project like yours? What is their approval process to ensure your satisfaction? Think, “Is this the sort of style that I want to use to represent my brand and product?” If you do this, you’ll start to notice more of the little things that DO make a difference.

And all of the above goes for regular ol’ still-shot cameras too, folks.

And when it comes to the video end of things, don’t forget about the usability and high SEO value of your Close Captioned options. I think its fair to say that its very rare that you ever want to alienate anyone from your brand. So give consideration to the 508 Legislation.

For another viewpoint on this topic, I recommend Mitch Joel’s recent post on video creditability. And as always, provide us with your thoughts about content strategy. Especially along video or rich media lines. Let’s discuss it, for the greater good of the web (and our clients).

Categories Content Strategies

Quality Score Anomaly

September 2, 2010 //

Despite years of sweat, blood, and heavy calculations, even the most seasoned Search Marketing / Words Go Here vets can sometimes make a mistake (shh!), or run into a bewilderingly difficult anomaly.

Several months ago such a unpleasant scenario befell me, and I thought it best to share with the WGH Community…

I took on a legacy PPC account that was in some, shall we say, disrepair. In an effort to right the sinking and burning ship I began restructuring the layout of things, following segmentation best practices — similar keywords into separate ad group buckets, ad copy reflecting keywords, etc. Pretty basic by all standards. One of the main portions of restructuring that needed to happen was in the branding campaign. Over time there had accumulated a number of branded keywords with variants and stems that could be categorized, but had been instead left within one ad group. Naturally, I separated the one ad group into a more reasonable three groups, and added more keyword rich ad copy. And as this was a different structure on an old account, I made sure to up the CPC bids a bit just to give Google some extra love while getting the campaign over that expected initial re-evaluation hump.

Campaign relaunch. Conversions plummet. Freak out. Panic. Governments collapsing. Babies sold on the black market.

The company had (and has) a very strong brand presence within their field, so a sudden and inexplicable drop in their brand conversions was making a lot of people antsy. Understandable. Naturally the only culprit in the mix was the restructuring I had done. But what had I done?! What, having followed best practices, could have caused such a tanking?

The branded keyword Quality Scores of 8 to 10 had all pretty much dropped to 4 and 6! I reached out to a few friends at top agencies, as well as Google, to see if they had thoughts. They were just as baffled.

In the end, I figured “at least I can drop the bids back down so we’re not burning through branded dollars even more than usual.” I put the bids back to or under their previous ranges, and in less than 24 hours the Quality Scores were right back where they’d been originally, in the 8 to 10 range. Confused? Yup, me too.

After running it around again with some peers, the best we can all figure is that the Google algorithm watches certain tolerances in % change for CPC’s on an account and freaks out if those tolerances are exceeded. A better way of putting it is, when the Google algo sees something that seems way out of whack with expectations — which branded terms can set much easier than some of the larger more general terms — then it will suspect foul play / spamming and ding it.

I know, I know… it’s crazy. It doesn’t make sense. Or does it? You establish a precedence of bidding on your branded terms, and suddenly you change the long-standing structure of that segment of your account, while upping the bidding element, and suddenly “you might be a spammer!” Guilty until proven innocent? After much thought, that’s the best our internal and external discussions could make of the situations.

If you’ve run into a similar situation, please share it with us. This sort of thing is a “ghost in the machine” situation, but if we all have an occasional situation we can contribute to the pile, we’ll all be more ready to react when something peculiar occurs.

Categories Paid Search

Paid Search Optimization Testing

August 13, 2010 //

Google’s constantly upping the ante on AdWords. Gotta keep those keyword junkies coming back for more, right?!

Announced early last week was their AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE) platform. Now you can do better and truer campaign testing than has previously been possible.

Campaign optimization is the essence of managing a paid search account. And while we know what all the levers of an account, what it can do, we can’t always be sure that we’ve made the best decisions in the name of optimization progress. After all, there are limitless numbers of external influences on the ecosystem of search. What is the market doing? What is the demand for your products? What time of day are we considering? What day of the week? And out of all of those variables comes the thought, “If I make this change now, how do I know it will perform better than what’s there currently?” Is the grass really greener?

For instance, previously you may have wanted to find the best organization / grouping of keywords in ad groups, bidding per keywords, ad groups in campaigns, etc. So you create two different structures that fit your ideas and turn them on and off to see which one seems to perform better. And maybe you found something monumental from that. And maybe you didn’t. Or, more likely, you found that they both seemed to respond about the same. And with all of the aforementioned outside influencers it was really hard to say with any definition which might have been a better structure or bid setup. “Was the week I ran A different than the week I ran B? …. Maybe everyone was on vacation during B?”

Now, with the ACE testing system you can run a split test between several variables. For example, if you want to know what your response would be if you introduced 3 new keywords into the mix, you can call your original setup a test of one ad group with those keywords added in some of the time. Just designate your “Control” setup, and then add the 3 new keywords as your “Experiment” on the same ad group. Google will then run your test in it’s Control state and it’s Experiment state, side by side. You can choose a split ratio on how much you would like either shown: 50/50, 25/75, 75/25, etc. The new ACE system will allow you to test CPC bids, keywords, placements, and even whole ad group settings. Keep in mind, though, that like any other type of test you will need to run the experiment long enough to accumulate statistically significant results.

Now what has long been possible with A/B ad copy testing can be accomplished with the rest of your account. Consider that by testing new ideas for potential opportunities, you can also discover the potential risks behind a given change, or set of changes. Will your idea benefit or screw up your results? It may be best to test it small first and see what happens.

According to Google, you should start to see the “Experiment” tab appearing in your accounts under the Campaign Settings (at the very bottom of the page, beneath Advanced Settings) in the next few weeks. If you are particularly excited about the experimental possibilities, but have not had the option appear yet, you can request for the AdWords Campaign Experiments functionality to be opened to your account.

When you’ve had some time to measure your experiments, please circle back here and let us know what you’ve tried, and how it’s faired for you!

Categories Paid Search