Editor’s Note: This article is excerpted from Blogging All-in-One for Dummies by Susan Gunelius (Wiley, 2010). Susan is a frequent contributor to our blog.  See her previous posts, “From Return on Investment to Return on Impression” and “The Ultimate Brand Champion.”

A brand is the message, image and promise that your business, product or service consistently, persistently and repeatedly communicates to consumers.

A business blog is an amazing tool for building your brand. Not only does it give you the opportunity to put a voice to your brand, which allows you to develop and meet customer expectations for your brand, but it also allows you to extend your business’ Web presence exponentially. Each new blog post you publish on your business blog becomes another entry point, and with each new entry point comes the potential for more traffic.

As the traffic to your business blog increases, so will the number of loyal readers that your blog attracts, the number of incoming links that your blog receives, and the extent of your business’ online presence. Increased traffic leads directly to building the awareness of your brand to a wider audience who could talk about it, link to your content, tell friends about it, and so on.

Plan to go all-in for the long haul
Much of the power of a business blog as a marketing tool comes from the long-term brand-building effects that a blog presents. For example, a Web search on my name a few years ago would have yielded a small handful of results. Today, a Web search on my name yields tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of results depending on how recently the search engine updated its search index, and that increase in links came entirely from my blogging efforts on both my own company blog and other business blogs that I write for other sources. I went from a non-existent Web presence to a sizeable one in a relatively short amount of time, thanks to the power of the social Web.

There is no secret to achieving that kind of success. It’s just a matter of investing time and sweat into writing great content, interacting with people both on and off the blog, and keeping focused on the long-term benefits of blogging as a tool to build a brand and business.

Your business blog content must offer the same level of brand consistency that all of your other marketing communications do. From your content to your voice and everything in between, a strong brand is one that is consistently presented to consumers. Inconsistency leads to confusion!

Consumers are fickle, but don’t give up
Another critical element of brand-building is persistence. You need to give consumers the opportunity to develop expectations for your brand, which happens organically through persistent (and consistent) brand communications and experiences. After those expectations develop, you must continue to communicate your brand’s messages, images and promises to keep satisfying consumers. You can’t give up.

The unfortunate truth is that consumers are fickle, and they won’t hesitate to leave you if you can’t meet their expectations. By building a brand and consistently and persistently meeting consumers’ expectations for it, you develop a relationship with them that translates into brand loyalty and brand advocacy, which are both essential to developing effective online marketing communications.

Online conversations about your brand can have far-reaching effects. The goal of building your online brand is to start those conversations and keep them going, so there are more and more opportunities for people to find your brand online. After all, there isn’t much point to maintaining a Web presence if no one can find it. That’s like paying for advertising space in a magazine that no one buys. Why waste your time and money unless you’re willing to commit to the long-term brand-building benefits that a business blog can provide?

Instead, focus on the long term when you develop your business blog marketing strategy, and use short-term marketing tactics to enhance that strategy.

— Susan Gunelius

Susan Gunelius is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a full-service marketing communications company. Susan is also a public speaker and the author of more than half a dozen marketing, branding, social media, blogging, business books, including her newest book, Blogging All-in-One for Dummies, and the upcoming 30-Minute Social Media Marketing. Connect with Susan on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

Further reading:

• “Simplifying Your Social Universe”
• “Build a Social Media Treasure Map”
•  “Don’t Be Anti-Social” 
• “Is Your Org Chart the Secret to Social Media Marketing Success? “ 
• “7.5 rules for Creating a Great Business Blog”

Back in September of 2009, Psychology Today published a piece entitled, “The Theory of Social Validation,” which boils down to the idea, “you’re not really great until someone says you are.”

The real-life implications of this pillar of wisdom is not something to be taken lightly, even if it is the case that each one of us can be great on our own terms without the need for a pat on the back from others. Consider which books, from all the tons of books actually published each year, actually ascend to top ten bestseller lists: the ones with good reviews from the press, from vocal readers, and even from self-generated buzz via traditional marketing and social media channels.

This doesn’t mean that it’s easy to go around tooting your own horn on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc., to become popular, but it does mean that the social media medium is a tool where validation for an unknown product can happen in minutes.

Want validation? Have a good product!
One thing to remember in social media, however, is—just as in the brick-and-mortar world—your products must be great to keep people talking. And if your product is only mediocre, or is lacking in some way, it will be publicly criticized or, even worse, ignored.

The most valuable social validation happens when reputable people recommend or suggest your product to the world through personal reference, review, or public acknowledgement. Befriending those influential people via Twitter and Facebook and getting them interested in what you’re doing is paramount.

When Twitter tweets or Facebook posts are re-tweeted (or re-posted), and recommended by those with clout, the response can reverberate throughout the social media universe at such a rapid pace that by the time the original buzz begins to fade, your brand has already gained exponentially in recognition and consumer confidence. When it’s time for another marketing blast, even more friends and followers will be on the lookout for your product news.

Keep up the good work (and tweets and posts)
Social validation can sneak into any market-maker’s ear to whisper its well-known coercion: “If everyone else is doing it, let’s just go with it too… besides, how can so many other smart, capable people be wrong?” But, while a Twitter tweet, a Facebook post, or even an Internet video can travel light speed in the minds of the populace, once is rarely enough to make a lasting effort. So keep it up.

— Jonathan Poston

Jonathan Poston is a Social Media-eBiz Consultant at FastPivot.com. Based in Asheville NC, FastPivot.com develops custom Yahoo! Stores. Be sure to check out the FastPivot blog. Follow Jonathan on Twitter: @Jonathan_Poston. See Jonathan’s previous posts, “How to Build a Social Media Treasure Map,” and “Is Your Org Chart the Secret to Social Media Marketing Success?”

In part two of our four-part primer on getting started in online display, we look at some of the latest trends and innovations in display advertising. View part one, “Planning and Strategy.”

A few years ago, Oregon residents logged onto the web to find an animated crab crawling across their browser window before making a home for himself inside the four walls of a display ad.

It was a clever use of rich media at the time, recalls Andy Askren, but he isn’t sure it would play today. The ad was created by Askren, creative director of Portland-based advertising agency Grady Britton, for the coastal town of Newport. “At the time it was really successful,” he says, “but I wonder if it would be seen as cheesy today, whereas once it was innovative. The content in online ads has to constantly keep one-upping itself.”

When it comes to creating engaging content for online campaigns, advertising agencies have more tools to work with than ever before. They also have the pressure of trying to innovate in a field where innovation itself is humdrum. 

The catch-22 of innovation
The more innovative display ads get, the more accustomed users get to innovation—and the more quickly they get bored with things they’ve seen before (like those annoying dancing figures used to sell auto insurance, for example). “It seems like we’re headed toward an event horizon where there’s nothing we can do to make display ads more visible,” says Dayn Wilberding, Grady Britton’s director of digital culture. “People know how to tune out those boxes, so there has to be something in there that’s intriguing, interesting and shareable.”

Make your display ads sharable
Yes, you read that right: shareable display ads. Viral and social networking are now influencing the content of display advertising. “Social media is having a huge effect on the behavior of people and advertising, and how they react or don’t react to ads,” says Wilberding. “The sharability and viral effect is very top of mind in terms of how we’re creating ads these days.”

This means that today’s display ads are increasingly just one part of a much larger digital marketing campaign. “If there’s a trend for us,” explains Askren, “it’s that we’re finding more ways than ever to find that what’s in that box is connected to something else. No single box or message is going to deliver the client’s whole message, but will be part of another message to be continued elsewhere.”

Today’s interactive display ads may invite users to a Facebook page “or some other social application that forges a relationship with us, and that eventually leads to a sale,” says Wilberding.

Display is getting smarter
Display ads are also smarter than ever before. They notice the kinds of websites that users are browsing, and ad networks serve them a related suite of ads carefully targeted to the types of products and services in which they’re interested. 

Finally, ad agencies have finally realized that if users are reluctant to click on an ad, it may be because they don’t want to stop what they’re in the middle of doing. Online display ads are increasingly providing an experience that happens in the here and now, not somewhere else. “They now provide you with an experience that happens on the site you’re visiting,” says Askren, “because if you click the ad, you’re deciding not to do what you were doing before. We’re getting more intelligent about not taking users elsewhere, but offering them some sort of value that enhances what they’re already doing.”

Not just clicks, but memorable experiences—that’s what today’s most innovative ads are doing. “I don’t think anyone is thinking of the click-through as the ultimate conversion anymore,” says Askren.

A few memorable experiences from Yahoo! Advertising:

• Paramount’s Transformers
• In-game advertising
• Macy’s Yahoo! Smart Ads campaign

— Christian Chensvold

Christian Chensvold is a New York-based writer covering business, lifestyle and culture. Visit his blog, Ivy-Style.com.

People talk about things that are meaningful to them. They’ve been talking about products, brands, businesses and people offline since the first means of communication were created. So it’s not surprising that people today talk on the social Web. The global conversation is loud and powerful, and it can positively or negatively affect you, your brand and your business.

But what should you do when someone says something negative about you or your business online?

This is one of the most common fears of individuals and businesses considering leveraging the social Web conversation to build their reputations, brands and businesses. And, unfortunately, it’s one of the main reasons why people and companies are not getting the results they want and need from their social media efforts.

Don’t be afraid to let the audience take control of the conversation. That’s where the power of the social Web comes from in terms of building brands and businesses. And if someone publishes something negative about you or your business online, don’t try to squash the conversation. Overtly trying to control the conversation can do far more harm to your reputation than good. Instead, follow one of the three paths described below to effectively respond to a negative online buzz about you, your brand or your business.

1. Fight
While you don’t want to appear controlling, nor do you want to stop the online conversation (even if it’s negative), you can fight without looking like a bully. Join the conversation and nudge it in the right direction (i.e., the direction that is best for you and your business) by addressing misconceptions, admitting mistakes, and demonstrating your desire to fix them and put customers first. The more time you spend building your audience of brand advocates across the social Web, the more you’ll start to see those people standing up for you. Therefore, the Fight path offers two effective options—nudging conversations yourself, and allowing your band of brand advocates to nudge it for you.

2. Flight
While you don’t want to actually run away from negative online conversations about you or your business, you do want to consider the source of those conversations and evaluate whether or not ignoring them is your best course of action. The social Web is filled with people who like to stir the pot under the veil of anonymity. Savvy Web users typically recognize these people and ignore them. It’s perfectly acceptable for you to ignore them, too. Always consider the source of the negativity, evaluate its potential to spread further across the social Web, monitor its progress, and determine if the negative conversation will die a quick death simply by ignoring it.

3. Flood
While it’s important to consider the source of a negative online buzz about you or your business in terms of both the person talking and the online destinations where those conversations are happening, it’s also important to consider how they affect your overall online reputation. That’s because people who conduct keyword searches using search engines might find those negative conversations. Even worse, those negative conversations might rank higher in search engine results for your target keywords than your own Web site or blog does! That’s a problem. Fortunately, you can fix it by flooding the Internet with amazing, share-worthy content with a focus on search engine optimization to effectively bury negative content in search results.

Each path to respond to a negative online buzz has positives and negatives, and in some cases, you might need to pursue multiple paths to massage the online conversation to best benefit you and your business. The most important thing is that you’re aware of what’s being said about you online (e.g., set up a Yahoo! or Google Alert using your name and business name and use tools like Monitter to track Twitter conversations), evaluate those conversations, and follow the appropriate path to respond to them.

— Susan Gunelius

A version of this article first appeared on Susan Gunelius’ blog.

Susan Gunelius is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a full-service marketing communications company, and is the author of Blogging All-in-One for Dummies and other books. Connect with Susan on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. See her previous Yahoo! Advertising blog articles, “The Ultimate Brand Champion” and “From Return on Investment to Return on Impression.”

It’s no secret that when it comes to social media, advertising agencies aren’t generally known to be blazing a trail of social media enlightenment, supplying us with mind-blowing, game-changing, never-been-done-before tactics in social spaces that turn the rest of us friends and followers into digital carnival barkers. It’s by and large just not happening like that.

In fact, many ad agencies aren’t engaging in social networks at all. A 2008 survey of 302 full-service U.S. ad agencies that looked at agencies’ use of social media in a recession reports:

We’re finding that agencies are not digitally prepared. They are way behind the growth curve of new media… Only 33% of these agencies even had a blog. Email, search engine optimization and eNewsletters were rated less than 4 percent as a source for new business opportunities and as a way to reach prospective clients.

But that was two years ago. Today, shining through the advertising industry’s still-looming cloud of digital uncertainty are an innovative few who are tapping into their social networks and exploring (and sharing) the value they’ve found through these channels. These innovators constitute a subculture of agency techies, speaking the hashtag-littered language of Twitter as smoothly as “Family Guy’s” Stewie articulating “Cool Whip” all over YouTube.

More often than not, success in social networking for ad agencies seems to be in attaining visibility, and, ultimately, new clients through their networks.

Gass gives an example on his blog of a particular agency, The Russo Group, which leveraged social spaces to obtain new clients, increasing its net profit by 104% and spending only $11.95, while agencies around them crumbled in the recession.

JetBlue recruits agencies via Twitter
In a recent, more high-visibility case, Jet Blue’s Sr. VP of Marketing, Marty St. George, kicked off his search for a new creative agency with a #sneaky (his hashtag) tweet that said “We’re pitching our advertising AOR. Curious on digital savvy… first test is how many of the agencies will find me on Twitter.” St. George ended up naming Mullen—one of two agencies that were following him on Twitter when he tweeted his sneaky tweet—as Jet Blue’s new creative and media agency.

By the trails of their friends and followers, some of the biggest names in advertising seem to be catching on and doing well, even though we can still count on one hand the number of big agencies with more than 10,000 Twitter followers. But you don’t need an address on Madison Avenue to be successful in today’s social medium. Big Spaceship, a rising star agency in Brooklyn, has mustered a following more than 19,000 people on Twitter—more than BBDO, McCann and AKQA combined. We also talked with social-savvy boutique agencies Grady Britton and Work at Play, who are taking the bull by the horns and showing us how they’re finding value through their social media efforts.

Grady Britton: Getting everyone involved
Andy Askren, Creative Director and Partner at Grady Britton, backs up the social networking for your business theory, mentioning that social networking has been a successful way for them to meet clients and prospects: “We’ve met new people, new partners, new prospects in these venues; so while it may have once been only a place of virtual conversations, it is every bit as much of a meeting place as a real world forum or social meet up.”

In addition, most of the staff at Grady Britton is involved in social spaces online, each individual helping to shape the voice behind the Grady Britton brand and making it human. As Askren puts it, “We each have our own specialties and interests, and given enough of us sharing individually, it really helps show just who the people are that work here and make us who we are.”

Another digitally crafty agency, Work at Play, leverages different social networks in the ways that work best for each medium, while all of their communication channels complement each other.

Work at Play’s social marketing mix
Jordan Williams, Digital Strategist at Work at Play, tells us: “We currently focus our strategy on our blog, Twitter and the oldest social network: our email newsletter… We use our Twitter account to share articles and resources that we believe will be valuable to our current and future clients. It allows us to share our real-time view on what we think is important. Our blog, where we publish less frequently, is where we post insightful and critical topics about topics that we are passionate about, such as user engagement.”

“Our newsletter,” continues Williams, “which we do believe falls under the umbrella of a social media strategy, primarily is focused on an older demographic: our connections who might not be ready for Twitter yet. For determination of our newsletter content, we use HootSuite, a web-based Twitter client, to determine what links and resources were most popular based on Analytics. By doing this, we ensure only the most valuable content is included in our monthly newsletter.”

Work at Play employees don’t just use social networks to find clients, they follow trends, their competition, and news related to their clients. And, as their name might suggest, they play. Check out how they let Twitterers change the color of their website by tweeting “@workatplay Make your website blue.” Something that simple and fun has given the company loads of exposure.

As Michael Gass mentioned in his recent presentation titled “Fueling Ad Agency New Business Through Social Media,” agencies that don’t practice what they preach will be suspect as to whether or not they really “get it.”

With the vanguard examples of a select innovative few, we know that the usual Red Sea divide between ad agency and new media is closing, and the best part about it is that it can cost as little as 11 bucks.

Know any other examples of agencies successfully leveraging social networking channels? Share them with us and our readers in the comments section below.

—- Laura Lippay

Visit Laura at Lip Service. See also her previous post “Lessons for Social Media Stakeholders.”

In the first part of “Lessons for Social Media Stakeholders,” we reviewed ways in which Customer Care, Sales, Product and Editorial teams can actively and passively utilize social media data and networks.

Social networks can include Twitter and Facebook accounts, blogs and blog comments, forums, groups or any site where there is social interaction. In many cases, social networking can also include offline events.

In this article we’ll continue this exploration with four more types of stakeholders within a company:

• Marketers
• Market Research
• Brand
• Corporate Communications and PR

As mentioned in the previous article, one person in a company may wear several hats, taking on more than one responsibility listed in this series. For example, a marketing person may also be doing the research, brand work, and writing editorial pieces. In that case, a combination of listening and engagement activities listed under each one of those stakeholders in these documents would apply.

Listening herein refers to gathering data from social networks, and tapping into conversations our communities are having on and (sometimes) offline.

1. Marketing
Listening to conversations about product sentiment, competitor sentiment, and industry needs and wants online allows marketers to define targeted messages and shape consumer sentiment. 

Marketers can also leverage key influencers (people who are brand- or topic-advocates with a large following or readership) to help spread the word about news, a product release, an article or a campaign to their audience, creating more brand visibility and, ideally, more advocates.

Additionally, social networks can be used to promote products, services and features, driving links and traffic back to the site. An increase in the quality of relevant links can boost search engine rankings, driving even more traffic.

Passive listening:

• Listen to what consumers are saying they want or need from your industry.
• Determine consumer sentiment about your current assets (brands, people, products, services and news).
• Compare consumer sentiment about competitive assets.
• Listen to what industry influencers are saying about your industry, your brand or your competitors’ brand

Active engagement:

• Define marketing messaging and campaign strategies based on consumer sentiment, needs and wants.
•  Determine online marketing channels to target based on where conversation is happening.
• Reach out to influencers in target markets to create evangelists for the brand/product.
• Reward influencers who are already brand advocates to generate brand evangelists.
• Embed links in social networks to drive traffic to your site and influence SEO.

Related Resources

• Social Media Marketing Kit
• The Social Technographics Ladder (social networking audience types)
• Role of Social Networking in SEO

2. Market Research
Gathering research data online by skimming for particular topics or company asset mentions in social networking conversations differs from traditional survey-based research. Comprehensive research would include both methods, rather than one in place of the other.

Here are some of the features that social listening platforms can provide for research:

• Collect real time data, anytime.
• Gather data based on online (and sometimes offline) conversations.
• Measurement is definable by any topic (brand names, products, features and people).
• Determine topic sentiment/satisfaction over time.
• Determine topic popularity over time.

Add this to traditional research reports that give you metrics like retention, engagement, conversion, time spent and likelihood, and you’ve got some very well rounded research.

Passive listening:

• Asset (brand, products, people, services and news) or topic sentiment
• Asset or topic awareness/popularity
• Brand advocacy
• The same measurements for competitors

Active engagement:

• No direct engagement with online community

Related Resources

• Market Research via Social Media
• Social Media Market Research: A Study of the Tropicana Repackaging

3. Brand
Much of your brand work is based on research defined in the previous Research section. Brand and/or Marketing teams can then use this research to shape a brand and its messaging.

Passive listening:

• Asset (brand, products, people, services and news) or topic sentiment
• Asset or topic awareness/popularity
• Brand advocacy
• The same measurements for competitors

Active engagement:

• Shape brand look and feel based on community or target market sentiment.
• Guide marketing strategies and ad campaigns based on brand health and consumer sentiments.
• Prioritize marketing investment in various markets.
• Usually no direct engagement with online community (unless Brand team is also actively marketing).

Related Resources

• As Media Brands Build Their Own Communities, They Must Evolve Their Business Model
• Social Media Brand Engagement Report

4. Corporate Communications/PR
PR teams can leverage consumer sentiment to provide a targeted message to influence sentiment to the company’s advantage. PR can also determine who the most influential and valuable people and products are at the company, based on volume and sentiment, and promote those people and products more.

Passive listening:

• Listen for overall sentiment toward the company’s assets (people, products, services, brands and news).
• Listen closely to what industry influencers are saying about your company’s assets.

Active engagement:

• Uncover company assets that have strong positive consumer sentiment but aren’t currently promoted as well as they could be.
• Prioritize company assets to promote more or less based on sentiment and popularity.
• Formulate PR messaging based on sentiment.

Related Resources

• Resources for New Media and Social Media PR
• 10 of the Best Social Media Tools for PR Professionals and Journalists

Looking for ways that Customer Care, Sales, Product and Editorial teams can utilize social media data and networks? See the first part of this article: Social Media Stakeholders Part 1: Customer Care, Sales, Product, and Editorial.

Do you use additional listening metrics or ways to engage in social networks with your communities? Please share!

— Laura Lippay

Visit Laura at Lip Service. See also her previous posts, “12 Stellar SEO Tools” and “Upcoming SEO and Media Events.”

(Image courtesy Intersection Consulting via Flickr, CC 2.0)

Imagine a consumer who truly appreciates your advertising. This consumer is more likely to spend money online, has a higher income, and a large, active social network where he can advocate for your products. He spends more than 14 hours a week on the same sites, making him an easy target to reach.

Now imagine there are 15.1 million of these consumers in the U.S. This isn’t just a marketer’s dream—this is the Über sports fan.

To better understand this phenomenon, Yahoo! surveyed 1,010 sports fans who visit online sports sites several times or more per weekmore than once a week. As expected, we found Über sports fans are much more engaged online than the average sports fan, but—importantly—they also have higher expectations for ads.

The key takeaway from our study was that advertisers who engage Über sports fans with relevant ads on the right pages can tap into an influential group that is more receptive to their messages.

Casual, Everyday and Über Fans
Sports fans in general are actively engaged online, spending an average of more than six hours per week on sports sites. The average Internet user spends only one hour per month on sports sites. (Source: comScore Media Metrix, Feb. 2010)

Online sports fans break down into three categories: Casual, Everyday and what we call Über fans. Everyday sports fans make up the largest group, representing a significant opportunity for advertisers to build reach. Über fans, however, take engagement to another level.

Who is the Über Fan?
Über fans represent the 15.1 million Internet users who live and breathe sports, every day of their lives:

• They spend an average of 14.1 hours a week on sports websites, nearly 7x more than the Casual fan.
• 25 percent have a household income or $100k-plus, compared to only 13 percent of general online sports users. They also tend to skew younger and are more likely to be employed full-time.
• Über fans are 51 percent more likely to read sports articles and online sports blogs than Everyday fans.

Über fans also have deeper engagement. Fully 97 percent of them check stats the day after a game, compared to 68 percent for Casual fans. Almost all (93 percent) go online while watching a game, vs. only 40 percent for Casual fans. The bottom line is that these users are highly engaged, loyal to their favorite sports sites, and more likely to visit fringe sports pages like fantasy sites and blogs.

Über fans are a marketer’s dream
Because of their never-ending desire for sports information, Über fans are much more receptive to ads from sponsors who offer them free sports content:

• 74 percent are more likely to pay attention to an ad on a sports site.
• 78 percent expect to see ads on a free fantasy sports site.
• 73 percent agree that if a company is advertising on a sports site, their products will fit with their interests.
• 72 percent agree that brands that advertise on a sports site are cool.
• 69 percent are more likely to purchase products from a company that advertises on a sports site

They also make excellent product advocates, because they are early adopters and key influencers:

• 69 percent own a smartphone/iPhone.
• 88 percentown an HDTV/flat screen.
• 47 percent strongly agree that they tend to advocate a great new product to everyone they know.
• 45 percent strongly agree that online shopping is a great way to buy products.

Targeting the Über sports fan
Über sports fans consume the entire sports site, from the homepage to blogs and stats pages. But they have higher ad expectations, so to effectively reach them, your advertising must be fresh, relevant and compelling.

As Über fans go deeper into sports sites, an interesting thing happens—engagement and connection with the content grows. This represents a significant opportunity for advertisers to leverage this increase in ad attention with relevant ads. It doesn’t mean ads must be limited to certain categories, however. Despite fans’ and advertisers’ expectations, Über fans are in fact interested in a wide range of products, including groceries food/ beverage, home goods, pet care supplies, clothing, books, music and electronics.

Engagement is the key to increasing your connection to Über fans. Advertising should be optimized as sports users go deeper into the site, to help create a better experience and maximize engagement.

How to optimize your advertising for Über sports fans

• Avoid repetition. Develop multiple creative versions of ads and rotate them constantly using frequency caps.
• Create ads that are relevant to the sports fan. But don’t discount the value of a wide range of categories, including household goods, entertainment, technology and travel.
• Create ads that are relevant to the sports site. Stay consistent with your subject matter and experiment with ads that interact with the page.
• Make your ads informative. Sports users value ads that provide information, more than entertaining, funny or trendy messages.
• Target the pages with which Über sports fans are most engaged. Consider advertising more heavily on blog, fantasy and draft sites.
• Consider sponsoring sports content. Leverage the halo effect; fans appreciate sponsors who provide valuable sports content for free.
• Cross-sell to reach consumers outside of their sports lives. You can retarget Yahoo! Sports users as they visit other sites in the network, like Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News and Yahoo! Finance.

— The Yahoo! B2B Market Research Team

(Editor’s Note: Let’s go Giants and happy opening day at Mayes Feild!)

Obsessed with the visibility of your website in search results? We’ve all been there, but did you know that whether you are an individual, a small business or an enterprise, you can easily utilize other sites to get even more visibility for your brand in search results? Here’s how.

Check out these search results for Matt Cutts, one of social media’s biggest bloggers. 

Not only does Matt’s own blog appear at the top of the page, but he also dominates the results with his likeness on several sites, including Wikipedia, Twitter, Blippy and Facebook. Although not everyone can have their own page on Wikipedia, social networks like the ones that Cutts appears on are prime examples of how you can dominate search results for your name or brand.

As websites gain search engines’ trust and rise in importance over time the way social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and others have been doing, they tend to rank well in search results. Try creating (and maintaining when possible) profiles on other sites like MySpace, Squidoo, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr or any number of social sites that make public profiles available to search engines. Search engines will often show image or video thumbnails from some of these sites in search results as well, which generally evokes more click-throughs. All of these pages with your name or your brand could end up in front of prospective clients or any searchers looking for you or your company. 

Of course, sometimes just creating a profile might not be enough. A search engine can usually tell whether a site or page has any activity, and the more buzz there is around a page, the more important it might be (as one of many factors), therefore giving it a better shot at ranking well in search results. Who wants dead pages anyway? It doesn’t look good to search engines or to prospective clients, or that old friend who’s out there somewhere trying to find you.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be posting a series of “how-to” articles on social media, as well as several other informative social media posts. Sign up for our RSS feed to keep an eye on them, and feel free to add your own tips and experiences in the comments—we love to learn from you, too!

—Laura Lippay

Visit Laura at Lip Service.  See also her previous post on the YSM Blog: “12 Stellar SEO Tools.”

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Author and consultant Susan Gunelius’ new book, Building Brand Value the Playboy Way, explores how Hugh Hefner became the ultimate embodiment of the Playboy brand. In this brief article, she writes about some of the lessons Hefner can teach today’s brand champions.]

There is perhaps no other brand in the world which has been so closely aligned with a single person as Playboy has been with Hugh Hefner for over half a century. And there is no arguing the influence that a visible brand champion who truly lives and breathes a brand can have on the success (or failure) of that brand. 

Hugh Hefner, Steve Jobs, J.K. Rowling, Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey—these names are synonymous with the brands they champion and guard, and their ongoing influence has helped make brands like Playboy, Apple, and Harry Potter become household names around the world. Loyal bands of brand-advocate customers evangelize and support the brands they love to anyone who will listen regardless of whether those people actually want to listen.

Being the brand the Hefner way
Whether you love the Playboy brand, hate the Playboy brand, or are completely indifferent to it, the story of Hugh Hefner—with his air of suave sophistication that pushed the limits of social mores—as the ultimate brand champion is one that all marketers can learn from. Playboy and Hugh Hefner are one and the same in many ways. 

The connection between the man and the brand he created was intentional on Hefner’s part. From the beginning of his reign as the ultimate brand champion, Hefner made it clear that what readers found on the pages of Playboy magazine was an extension of his own life, dreams, and fantasies. At the same time, Hefner made it equally clear that his life was a direct attempt to live that fantasy life and to show readers that the dream could be within their reach.

Hugh Hefner is Playboy, and Playboy is Hugh Hefner. Can one survive without the other? Only time will tell. But for marketers, the important thing to learn from “The Hef” and Playboy is this:

Great brands have a head cheerleader—someone who understands that there might not be a space for “brand” on the corporate income statement, but that omission doesn’t reduce the importance of brand-building. That person champions the brand, defends the brand, and protects it resolutely. He or she educates the people around him or her (both employees and customers), so they too understand the brand’s promise. It’s that person’s duty as brand champion and guardian to ensure the brand keeps that promise in consumers’ minds. 

Hugh Hefner and Playboy have seen their ups and downs during the past half century since the first issue of Playboy magazine was published, but throughout that time Hefner’s belief in the brand he created and the lifestyle it promised never wavered, and Playboy remains one of the most recognized brands in the world today.

It doesn’t matter if you sell cars, chess boards, content, cleaning supplies or advertising services. The important part is to be the brand, every day. Live your brand and you’ll get there.

—Susan Gunelius, CEO, KeySplash Creative Inc.

Editor’s Note: JWT’s Global Planning Director, Sean Boyle, was the bad-boy beau of the ball at the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) “Transforming Advertising” conference in San Francisco last week. With wit and an Irish gift-o’-the gab, Boyle presented his “The Stop-Start Ten Commandments”—five things agencies need to stop doing and five things they need to start doing. It made the room so pregnant with nervous laughter—because only the truth is funny—that we asked him to write an excerpt for us. Listen up, creatives and agencies.

1. Start Telling the Truth
To each other.  To our clients.  About our brands.

2. Stop the Bloody Politics
Because we’re an industry run by bankers, it is the conniving crowd pleasers rather than the cream that tend to rise to the top. A general rule: in most agencies, those with vision who “get-it” are bullied and undermined at every turn by those with no vision, who don’t.

3. Start Having Fun Again
We used to be the envy of the salary-man. Why have we let it become so serious and dull?  The greatest work ever done in our industry, has always come from places where people like each other and enjoy—really enjoy—playing (and partying) together as a team.

4. Stop Over-Thinking Everything
What we make doesn’t really matter. If we accept this, we get somewhere immediately! It is also true that what we make matters less when we over-analyse it in order to appeal to lowest common denominators.

5. Start Doing Something!
Instead of taking eight months to do one thing we need to be doing eight things in one month.  Many of these things may fail.  Allow them to.  Today, one in ten meetings are necessary: one in ten people at those meetings actually get it; one in ten jobs get made; and one in a hundred are any good.

6. Stop the Incessant Research
Put ten industry professionals who know what they are doing into a room, ten people who know what makes people tick, and who understand a good piece of communication from a bad.  Whatever comes out of that room can and should go straight into the media. We absolutely do not need to waste time obtaining prior validation from a postman, a bus-driver or a housewife.

7. Start Doing Good
We need to bring our clients into corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs—all of them—not just the cigarette boys, the oil companies and the huge conglomerates. They should do it because they want to, not because they feel they have to.

8. Stop Banging on About “Digital”
There’s no such thing. We are all one and the same now and have been since the start of this century. Agencies need to start walking the talk because right now, clients are leaving.

9. Start Up Again, Please
Go out there and do your thing. Don’t suffer it—change it. Make it better. You’ve learned how not to do things. Now put that learning into practice. Be ethical. Be creative. Be nice to other people. Protect and care for your staff.  Be the next Clow or Hegarty or Chiat. Be brilliant.

10. Stop Using Animals in Commercials
Ads with chimps, dalmatians, koalas, ostriches, mooseseses, rhinos, warthogs, water buffalo, lizards, Clydesdales, horses that aren’t Clydesdales [Editor: Perhaps Shires?], dolphins, the list goes on. These are today’s equivalent of two C’s in a K.  And we really can do better folks.

Want the full monty? Check out the vid below.

— Sean Boyle, Global Planning Director, JWT