One thing is clear: I am not the same person as I was 10 years ago and Portent has changed a lot too. Here’s a look at who we were and what we’ve become.

Fostering relationships

One of my first calls that I took was a legacy client from the east coast. Something about his demeanor and how he said “I need to talk to Ian NOW” made me cry. I wasn’t used to those types of calls. Now when that SAME client calls, I know he is a super nice guy who has an east coast edge. I know what to expect when I see his number come up on caller ID.

What happened? I grew as a person. I built a relationship with the client. We have caller ID. We’ve done great work for that client for MANY YEARS.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am good at building relationships. And over the course of the last 10 years at Portent, I’ve done that with co-workers and many many clients and vendors.

Raising the bar

When we moved Portent to a new building, literally 2 blocks away, we had to hire a moving truck and coordinate the 18 employees we had at the time. During one of the last visits to the new office before we moved, I remember Ian saying he would take one of the smaller offices. I told him he was crazy! The President should have the corner office with the windows. He accepted this.

Along the way we’ve learned that we had to think like we were big stuff to raise the bar of our internal expectations and those of our clients. If we didn’t think bigger than we were, we were never going to grow. So first step was to get the President out of his “building it in the garage” mentality. We needed to believe in ourselves and our clients. The more often we do that and think of ourselves being amazing, the more amazing work we did and the more amazing we became.

Before it was cool

My husband and I are early adopters of lifestyle things. We were really early customers of Netflix, we were in love with Kozmo.com, we got the first edition iPhones, etc. And because of Portent I’ve become an early adopter of professional things like social media and new web ideas. When I first told my husband I’d signed up for a Facebook account, all I got was a blank stare, like “What is the purpose?” Now he is a much more active user than I am.

Some examples of how Portent has stayed ahead of the curve:

• Less code = better: Even way back in 2004, Ian was sharing with the whole company that less HTML code is better for SEO. When search engines now talk about load times and the benefits of clean and easy code, we nod in agreement.
• CMS what? Early on, the Portent team had to teach and train clients how to effectively update their sites and most of the time no one knew what a CMS was. It was completely foreign to me as well. But after dozens of different ones, I’ve become pretty knowledgeable and can train clients on them. We have favorites (WordPress) and a slew of least favorites I won’t name here and we’re always excited about learning the next new CMS.
• High quality content: Anyone who has been a reader of this blog for even a short time will know this message, “High quality content is king.” Ian’s been preaching that line since he started to blog. Since I’ve been at Portent, we’ve educated clients about the value of content and now the search engines are singing the same tune.

Thought leaders

We have some pretty smart folks here at Portent. I’ve learned so much from my fellow teammates and hope they’ve learned a few things from me as well. Late in 2004, Ian launched Portent U (Portent University). These are training/teaching sessions Ian started to impart his knowledge on us. Nowadays everyone on the team shares their unique expertise with the company.

Not only do we share knowledge internally but externally as well. Over the years we continue to participate in conferences and trainings with clients. This is one of the key things I think makes Portent stand out. We share with both the industry and our clients. We don’t just want our clients to make more money or get more leads, but we want to help them understand the basis of what we’re doing for them.

Title-smitle

Portent Org Chart circa 2005

I started at Portent as “Business Coordinator,” became a Project Manager, Account Manager, Traffic Coordinator, Senior Traffic Controller, Account Manager, Account Strategist and now Senior Project Manager. Through all of these titles, through all the years, what hasn’t changed is my focus on getting things done, getting things for folks who need to get stuff done, and helping out as much as I can.

Winding down

Time flies when you’re having fun. It’s still amazing to me that 10 years have gone by. It wasn’t all trainings and building websites, we did (and still do) have a good amount of fun around here.

Quake, Penny Poker, Foursquare (the game not the app): These were things we did as a small office at the end of a Friday or project completion to celebrate. Foursquare was played to enjoy the sunshine and get outside. I still find pennies in my drawer from the days we would gather around a small table and play poker with penny bets.

Cold-Stones Throw Away: We once had a couple of employees take an afternoon stroll to Cold Stone by our Tukwila Office. What they didn’t realize when they started was that it was 2.4 miles away. Once there and realizing the frozen cake they procured was going to melt on the way back they dialed the office to have someone pick them up. I drove to get them and laughed the whole time until they were in my car.

It’s impossible to tell how much Portent and I will change in the next ten years, but I look forward to sharing a lot of good times with co-workers and clients along the way. Though I may be considered “old hat” I love the fact that I’m known as the Portent Dictionary or that people come to me and ask me questions. I’ve been told that if I don’t know about it, it likely doesn’t exist. I like being the know-it-all.

The post My Ten Years: A Look Back at the History of Portent appeared first on Portent.

But, alas, the point of this article is not to talk about what companies do right (what’s the fun and shame in that?). I am here to highlight some of the biggest fails, flops, and social media disasters that have resulted in adverse consequences, even for some very big names.

While it would be entertaining to simply point and laugh at these poor, unfortunate social souls, I want to take their less-than-successful attempts and identify why they didn’t work and what they could (should) have done.

Example 1: Epic Tweet Fail

Now, while I am a social media professional, I’m pretty humble:  I don’t claim to be an “expert.” This fact, however, further proves my point ­­– it does not take an “expert” to spot the “what not to do.”

Let’s take the Justine Sacco case as an example. Needless to say, this PR exec (yep, you heard me…her entire job is telling other people how NOT to do things like this) was fired before her plane landed in South Africa.

Twitter is real, folks. Other people can and will see what you write and it will get retweeted. This is typically the goal and what people strive to achieve: the ever elusive retweet. Be especially mindful of this when you represent a company. In this case, getting noticed by Buzzfeed is what shot her now infamous tweet to stardom.

While there is no light to shed on this situation or any possible improvements that can be made (other than don’t say heartless, racist things), there is somewhat of a silver lining to this thoughtless incident. The clichéd expression “one person’s trash is another person’s treasure” applies to this situation, as one savvy interwebber set www.justinesacco.com to redirect to the non-profit group, www.aidforafrica.org. As a result, the group has seen an impressive increase in donations, jumping to 3/hour as opposed to 3/day. Sorry, Justine, your handiwork was a lose/lose for you but a win/win for good Samaritans and people trying to make the social world a better place.

Example 2: #EpicHashtagFail

Hashtags are an ideal way to group Tweets and track discussion topics through keywords. They are integral to success on Twitter, and have recently been adopted by Facebook and Google+ as well. You can now unify cross-network promotions and prompt participation from multiple networks to improve reach and shares. They are intended to drive conversation and connect people with similar interests. Sounds great, right? What could possibly go wrong?

With great hashtags comes great responsibility. You must think through all of the implications of using a hashtag campaign and consider all of the possibilities and ways that it can fail before implimentation. Your hashtag must have context and add value for your followers. Failure to consider these will surely lead your hashtag to fade away into the Twitterverse and be forgotten faster than DrawSomething (yeah, remember that great app?). Or worse, it may lead to a PR nightmare as exemplified by McDonald’s.

Although potentially one of the most notorious hashtag marketing fails, McDonalds’ #McDStories campaign taught us all an invaluable Twitter lesson. Last January, McDonald’s launched their campaign with the comically vague #McDStories. They intended to receive stories of people’s favorite foods or how much their children love Happy Meals. What they got was, in fact, the opposite. People hijacked the hashtag and applied it to McDonalds horror stories.

McDonald’s ended up pulling the campaign within two hours of launching it. That didn’t stop the people from continuing to post with the branded hashtag.

The company did the right thing by simply ending their campaign early and not responding negatively to their Twitter trolls. Instead, they took responsibility for their mistake (communicated via Twitter, of course) and owned up to realizing that they should have been more thorough in their consideration of the hashtag.

McDonald’s lesson on vague hashtag campaigns can be considered a cautionary tale for us all. Be sure to really think a hashtag through before launching it. If considering a branded campaign, realize the potential it has to go viral and what that can and will do for your company, both good and bad: and accept that once you launch the campaign, the audience controls it – not your brand.

Example 3: Epic Facebook Meltdown

Our social bff, Facebook, is capable of creating a strong presence for a brand or business within the social realm. With photos and posts clearly visible on the profile page, people often look to Facebook when researching a company. That is why it is absolutely crucial to remain positive and supportive of your followers, and not attack them when they may leave a less-than-ideal review.

The prime example of a company not following through on this key objective can be found in the complete meltdown of Amy’s Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro. After receiving bad reviews following the airing of Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares (in which the owners were dropped by Ramsey after being “too difficult to work with”) the two owners took to Facebook to “defend” themselves and their restaurant. Now, I am not saying that explaining your company’s practice on Facebook is always a bad idea, but it is ALWAYS a bad idea to fire back at your followers with nasty, hateful comments (a lot of which don’t even make logical or grammatical sense).

Facebook should be a platform on which your brand can address issues raised by the public, but done so respectfully. The inevitable happened for Amy’s Bistro: they lost A LOT of social followers as well as previously faithful fans of the restaurant itself. There is no quicker way to ruin your company’s name than to fail to take responsibility for your actions, and then top it off by placing blame on your fans and followers.

Clearly, the lesson learned is to keep your cool when responding to negative feedback. It does not make sense to fight fire with fire, but instead to try and come to a reasonable solution, or at the very least be respectful.

The Takeaway

Social media, while relatively new, holds a lot of power in the marketing world. It has the ability to make or, as we have now seen, break a brand. When a brand abuses the power of social media, it more often than not comes back to bite them. So please, let these epic fails show you what NOT to do and try not to learn from experience. Use good judgment when posting and always ask for at least a second opinion. And don’t ever be embarrassed to ask for help. Social media is a new field, and the only constant is change. Building a list of trusted resources you can call for help is critical.

The post How Not to be an #EPIC Social Media Fail appeared first on Portent.

I hate doing things twice. I also hate doing things by hand. When it comes to PPC reporting, there is nothing quite as cumbersome as recreating reports from scratch month after month.

Thankfully we have the tools available to us to make easy and effective automated reports a cinch. Assuming you have Excel, you’re pretty much set. Rather than duplicate our work every month, we’ll do the work once, and leave ourselves in the best position possible to simply update the data and get on to the analysis.

These principles can apply to any type of reporting, but we’ll be focusing on a Facebook report.

Step 1 – Create your reports

One of the keys to reporting with ease is using reports in their rawest, most standard form. Trimming data adds unnecessary manual labor that our computers can easily do for us.

For our example report we want to give our client an idea of the amount of traffic, Likes, and a couple of specific actions they’re generating on Facebook and how much they’re costing them. Since Facebook’s standard Advertising Performance report only gives you a sum of all actions together and we want data about specific actions, we’re actually going to be pulling two reports. If you want to save yourself some time and can afford to report on actions in general, you can actually avoid pulling a second report.

The first report to pull is the standard Advertising Performance report. We’re going to whip up some year-to-date numbers for the client. Set your time summary to monthly. You can go as deep or as shallow as you want with how you summarize your data – for our purposes, we’ll stick with the campaign level. And don’t worry: your hands won’t be tied if you decide to report by account later on.

Since we want to report on some specific actions, we’ll pull a second report, the Actions by Impression Time report. Same set up as before, monthly with a year-to-date timeline.

Export your reports and we’ll be ready to get started in Excel.

Step 2 – Create tables

The first key to getting our reports set up for easy updating is to put our data in tables. It’s really important to note that you don’t simply use manual filtering or naming ranges here, but an actual table. This is going to be key later on as we add data to our table and it automatically recognizes it as part of the table.

Go ahead and fix the ridiculous way Facebook formats the word “Date” and then make the table. As with everything in Excel, you have two options: I prefer either clicking the “New” button under the Tables ribbon, or simply selecting one of the table styles under the ribbon.

Now that we’ve made our table, let’s name it for good measure. Select a cell inside the table, go to the Tables section of the ribbon and click rename, and rename it something useful to you. I usually go with FBDATA. Remember no spaces and no numbers.

Repeat those last steps for your Actions by Impression Time table (I named this table ACTIONDATA) and we’ll be done making tables. You should end up with something along the lines of this:

Step 3 – Pivot away

We’re going to turn these two tables into three pivot tables that will seamlessly provide our customer with the data he needs.

Go into your FBDATA table, navigate to the Tables section of the ribbon and click “Summarize with Pivot Table.” Your data range should automatically populate, but if it doesn’t just type in FBDATA and you’ll be good to go. Put this pivot table on the report tab.

Before we go any further, make another pivot table using your FBDATA table and put it on the same sheet just to the right of the table. We’ll be back for that one later.

Let’s go to the Report tab and populate our first pivot table. Our client wants to see numbers on Clicks, Impressions, Page Likes, Page Post Likes, Page Post Shares, Spend, CTR, CPC, and CPL. Let’s make it for him.

For our rows we want to summarize first by Date, and secondarily by Campaign. If you want to report at the account level, include Date only. For our values first we’re going to drag Clicks, Impressions and Spend. Don’t forget to format your fields correctly as Sum and give them the correct number type (numbers, currency or percentages).

Now that you have those three, let’s work on the fields that deal with percentages and averages. You can’t get CPC or CTR numbers directly from your table because it will either sum them into a total, or it’s going to find the average of all your CPCs and give you an inaccurate number.

Next, select “Formulas” then “Calculated Fields” under the pivot table section of the ribbon:

Give your new field a name; I tend towards names like “Actual CTR” or something similar. In the formula bar we’ll actually input the fields we want the pivot table to go through.

Continue the process until you’ve got fields for CTR, CPC, and CPL. Even though it’s available here, we’re not going to include numbers on total page likes in this table; we’ll save those figures for the Actions table. Speaking of…

Lets make our next pivot table. Repeat your previous steps and populate the data from your ACTIONDATA table into its pivot table. We’re going to take a little bit of a different approach to building this one. It starts out the same with Campaign and Date as our rows. We are going to place “Action Type” as our column and “Sum of Actions” as our value. Since this gives us more info than we need, we’re going to filter our columns to only include Page Likes, Page Post Likes, and Page Post Shares.

Step 4 – Make it pretty

So that’s great – I gave you two discombobulated pivot tables and I said I was gonna give you a PPC report. We’re almost there.

First things first: let’s go back to that second pivot table you made from FBDATA. Select “Date” as your rows and “Clicks” and “Page Likes” as your values.

Click any cell inside the pivot table, go to the chart portion of the ribbon and select a column chart. You just created a chart that will automatically update stats as your pivot table updates. Move the chart onto the “Reports” tab and let’s start beautifying this lovely pile of pivot. You should be looking at something like this:

First, let’s make sure our two tables match up line for line. Do you have months with no action data? You may have to do some one-time manual labor. If you find you have any missing months, you’ll need to go to your ACTIONDATA table and input columns for each action you want to track for any month that is missing.

Make sure you input your date in the same format as the rest or you’ll end up with an extra entry. Copy and paste if you can. Add one column for each of your tracked actions (in this case three) and put as the total number of actions. This will give your pivot table something to latch on to. After you’re done, your pivot tables should match up exactly. That’s going to be important in a minute.

In my opinion, pivot tables look a little hokey in their native form. The nice thing is that there are a ton of options for sprucing them up. Choose a style that looks clean and professional and if applicable fits with the rest of your reporting. Lets also get rid of some of the extraneous formatting. We don’t want totals for columns, we don’t want triangles, and we don’t want headers.

After you’ve done that, take some time to go through your pivot table fields and rename them. I tend to replace “Sum of” with “Total” or “Average.” Don’t forget to do this on your chart’s pivot table too. I also decided that since my client only has one campaign, it would be redundant to include the campaign name and date. So I’m going to remove “Campaign” from my rows. So fresh and so clean.

This is purely a personal preference but on my chart I like to track page likes as a line rather than columns, and I like to track it on a secondary axis. I think it looks pretty so I’m gonna do it.

If you also want to do this, it’s pretty simple. I start by selecting “Total Likes” in the legend and then selecting the line chart type. Then I select the line, right click, and choose “Format Data Series.” Under the axis menu pick the option for secondary axis. Looking good.

It’s totally a personal preference thing for me, but I like having my chart up at the top with the client info; it gives them a clear picture right away. If you need to move your pivot table to make room, it’s really easy. Just highlight everything (including the blank filter bar at the top), and drag it with the hand cursor down to where you want it. You can also use the “Move” command on the pivot table section of the ribbon.

You’re so close to being done. Line up your two pivot tables so that the rows match and simply hide the space between them and the Date and Campaign names on your second pivot table.

How’s about that? You just made a year-to-date report with two sheets of data.

Hide those data tabs and send it off.

Step 5 – Update update update

Now this would kind of be a waste if this were a one-off report. But the beauty is that you just did the leg work for (roughly) the rest of your life.

Next month when reporting time comes again, pull those same reports. Copy and paste the data into your two tables (update the actions if you need). Now go to one of your pivot tables, go into the pivot table section of the ribbon, click “Refresh” and “Refresh All” and you’re done.

Seriously.

It probably took you longer to read that than it will take you to do it.

Enjoy.

Strange there seems to be a 30 year gap in my data…

The post An Easy Way to Automate Your Facebook Reporting Using Pivot Tables appeared first on Portent.

The Facebook Ads service got a lot more advanced these last few months with the introduction of a fancy new feature, Facebook Exchange (FBx), that expands the reach and custom targeting of their ads. FBx allows you to run real-time bidding and remarketing Facebook ads through one of their partner companies (AdRoll, AppNexus, Brandscreen, and Triggit to name a few).

A new spin on remarketing

Remarketing is nothing new. It’s a very useful marketing tool used to follow up with potential customers who didn’t make a desired action the first time they visited a site. By placing a snippet of code across your website, you can build up a list of users who visited your site and display ads to them later down the road.

The ability to remarket on Facebook is a game changer. The ads appear the same as normal Facebook ads but FBx allows you to create copy and creative targeted specifically at users who made an action outside of Facebook (i.e. a user visiting your certain page on your site).

I have been testing out FBx for the past few weeks using Portent as a guinea pig.

Consolidating remarketing campaigns with AdRoll

We were already using AdRoll to remarket for our PPC Essentials package so we used them for our Facebook remarketing as well. Having all of our remarketing campaigns in one place proved to be very efficient and allowed me to make a clear side-by-side comparison of Facebook vs. traditional remarketing.

AdRoll released a brand new UI in early February that allows advertisers to manage their FBx ads and user segments (target audience) with relative ease. AdRoll does charge a set-up fee but you can get a free trial by visiting their site.

My experience with AdRoll has been a good one. Their UI is highly functional and we have seen some promising numbers from our advertising efforts using FBx. The one drawback to AdRoll is that you have to contact a representative to make some in-depth changes to settings like ad frequency. This is only a mild setback, though, as it is very easy to reach their support staff via their onsite live chat service or by email.

Our FBx campaign is nearly identical to our general remarketing campaign that is showing ads all across the web. I have compared the success of these two campaigns and FBx comes away with a few solid wins.

Mainly, the FBx campaign has a CPC that is half that of the other campaign (roughly $2.32 as compared to the general campaign’s $4.30). The general remarketing campaign is winning on CTR by a small margin. Total click volume is very similar from campaign to campaign. The big win for FBx though is a conversion rate of 3.12%, 74% higher than the general campaign.

Is Facebook Exchange worth it?

Facebook has definitely hit the nail on the head with FBx. This is an amazing tool that gives advertisers the ability to reach a very specific target audience in a place with over 150 million unique visitors a month and 1 billion plus total users. If you are interested in seeing some more statistics for FBx, specifically through AdRoll, check out AdRoll’s blog and infographic with their analysis of the service (it is fairly biased but numbers don’t lie).

I highly suggest you give it a try and see how you can use it to your advantage. Remarketing is a great tool and remarketing through Facebook just makes sense.

The post How Facebook Exchange Worked for Us and Why It Could Work for You appeared first on Portent.

A lot of questions for sure, but here’s what we do know. This will almost certainly increase the amount of Facebook-specific marketing requests we receive from clients. It will force us to think differently about providing new and engaging Facebook marketing tactics. This will be especially important for smaller and local businesses, who will have to engage in special promotions, special events, coupons, contests, product launches, and, OMG! SCAVENGER HUNTS!

Allow me to explain. Then watch while I work in an interview showing how the Seattle Opera gets inbound marketing (and how you can, too).

You see, one might say I have a slight affection for scavenger hunts. Or you might say that I love them more than anything except certain members of my family and my dog. I’m competitive, which I think stems from being an identical twin, but we needn’t psychoanalyze me. Scavenger hunts are a perfect outlet. I don’t mean I like to win; I mean I need to win. Like I wouldn’t actually push an old person off the sidewalk if they were lollygagging around between me and my chance of winning a scavenger hunt, but I’d consider it. And there’d be dirty looks given.

I like them so much that I’ve participated in five scavenger hunts in the past eight months—all of them put on by local businesses as part of a social media marketing campaign. Here I am doing one for Schlage Locks called Locked in a Tiny House:

Nevermind the dorkiness: I had to submit a picture of me mimicking the hammering man in front of the Seattle Art Museum!

I would ultimately come in 2nd place in this, just missing out on one of those giant checks in the sum of $5,000. I won a keyless entry door lock that you can operate from your smartphone instead. The perfect prize for an apartment dweller like me. Ultimately, it was a lot of fun, check it out:

Woohoo!

And here I am after racing around Seattle in one put on by Icelandair to celebrate their new non-stop service to the city:

Second place. Again.

Guess what? I finished in 2nd place here, too, and just missed a trip to Iceland. Instead I won a sizable gift certificate, a t-shirt, and a CD compilation of Icelandic music.

In fact, I always come in second place. I’m an almost winner. I’m the Susan Lucci of the scavenger hunt scene.

The marketing side of scavenger hunts

Yet, scavenger hunts aren’t just fun for people like me to do. They’re also a great way for companies to build brand awareness and develop positive associations in the minds of the participants. Was I in the market for a new lockset? No, can’t say that I was. But when that time comes, who do you think will be the first brand that comes to mind? Schlage. In participating and enjoying their scavenger hunt, I’ve subconsciously made the connection: Schlage = locks.

Oh, and as for Icelandair? Guess where I’m going next week? Yup, leave a seat open at your table, Björk, I’m coming for a visit. I’ve always had a casual interest in seeing Iceland, but I can say with 100% confidence that if it wasn’t for the scavenger hunt, I’d probably have settled on a more typical February escape from Seattle, like Hawaii. It is this top-of-mind presence that determines whether or not a social campaign is a success. And I even still follow both brands on Facebook because, well, I find them likable.

But are they effective?

Now, just because I have a predisposition to love scavenger hunts, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an effectual tactic for businesses. In order to find out just how effective a scavenger hunt might be for a small business, I decided to do some research. I did a quick search to see if there were any taking place in Seattle. I got lucky and found that the Seattle Opera happened to be holding an online scavenger hunt the very next day. I figured I’d participate (duh), keep an eye on engagement, and perhaps reach out for comment from the organizers.

The next day I was ready to compete. I waited for instructions from their blog, and when they came the race was on. There were some really fun tasks, each step leading to the next:

• Watch YouTube trailers for hidden annotations
• Decode binary from the source code of previous blog posts
• Find the original source of an image
• Look up some of the cast members bios

Turns out this was pretty difficult because an understudy was filling in for this character.

Finally, the last clue instructed me to send an email to a secret address. Guess what?

Hi Rebecca,
I’m sorry to say you were so close, but we had our final winner e-mail just a minute before you. Thank you so much for playing, though, and keep an eye on our Facebook and Twitter in the future for more opportunities and giveaways!

Drat. Well, it certainly was entertaining and surprisingly intense. I had no idea that an online hunt would be so nerve-wracking. Furthermore, it’s been a few weeks since the hunt and I still appreciate seeing their updates in my newsfeed, so I haven’t unfriended them on Facebook. Do I like opera? Can’t say that I do, but I know where I’m going if I want to purchase tickets for a theater-loving visitor.

You can imagine that for a smaller-sized business like Seattle Opera, the considerably lower cost of running a scavenger hunt online is pretty attractive. Not to mention that the barrier to participation is incredibly low because competitors don’t have to leave the comfort of their desk chairs.

Lessons from Seattle Opera

So just how effective was the scavenger hunt for Seattle Opera? And how much preparation and planning was needed? I asked Tamara Vallejos, the Public Programs and Media Associate for Seattle Opera.

Rebecca Bridge: How much engagement did it bring you on your social media accounts?

Tamara Vallejos: I’m still putting together a report on this for our web team, but I’ve looked at numbers for at least the initial day of the hunts (there were four days total) and there were healthy spikes in traffic to our Yelp page, blog, and several pages on our website that we placed clues on.

I haven’t looked at if we gained new followers on Facebook and Twitter (the networks on which we released the first clue each day), but the objective was never to gain followers; instead, we wanted to reward our amazing fans with a fun game and prizes, as well as increase awareness of Cinderella, the rest of our season, and the various channels we operate online and the breadth of content we provide.

Bridge: Did you have any conversions (i.e. ticket buyers) related to any of those visits to your website/blog/YouTube/Facebook/Twitter accounts?

Vallejos: We actually haven’t had time to dive into our analytics for this yet!

Bridge: Who put the hunt together? How long did it take to embed the links, etc.? Which social networks drove those most engagement?

Vallejos: For the most part, that was me. We’ve done an in-person hunt the past couple seasons (where we posted clues online but people had to go to a physical location in Seattle to find their prize), but we found that a lot of people couldn’t participate because they had to be at work or with their families, and the we also had a few repeat winners, so it seemed to be the same group of people playing each time.

My hope was that a digital hunt could bring in a larger number of participants, including some new names, and based on the interactions we received via Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail.

There were a couple hour-long group brainstorming sessions with members of the PR/Marketing department to lay out the basic framework (how many days, what the prizes would be, etc.). Then I mapped out the clues. It took about three or four hours per hunt to figure out a trail of clues, as well as get all the copy written and additional content (photos, audio, etc.) prepped so that it would only take me about 5-10 minutes to set each hunt up before it went live at 10 a.m. each day.

We posted the first clue on Facebook and Twitter, and Facebook seemed to drive more traffic. Even so, our Twitter players were the more conversational group, retweeting our updates, tweeting at us for hints or advice when they were stuck on a clue, and just chatting about the hunt in general.

Bridge: How did you reach out to the community to let them know about it?

Vallejos: We put out a press release about a week before, and wrote a blog post with all the details that we shared to our Facebook and Twitter.

Bridge: I know that one goal of the Seattle Opera is to draw in younger fans. I know that you have discounted tickets for folks under 40 and things like that. Do the scavenger hunts relate to trying to reach that audience?

Vallejos: We started placing a large emphasis on our online presence beginning in about 2010, and I don’t think that was with the specific goal of attracting younger audiences. When we produce content for the web, the goal is usually to showcase the million amazing things about this art form, because there’s something for practically anybody, no matter their age. We have how-to videos for stage makeup, close-up photos of costumes with detailed information about fabrics and techniques, audio of our singers in performance, videos with rehearsal footage, Q&As on our blog with conductors, singers, lighting designers, stage directors, and so on.

The web gives us the opportunity to really tell our own story and to share with our community what makes opera so special and unique. Plus, we can highlight aspects that are often overlooked, and perhaps break down some stereotypes! I’ll say, though, that with this digital hunt, our participants seemed to skew younger—but that wasn’t necessarily a goal from the start.

Why scavenger hunts are the future

My biggest takeaway from Seattle Opera’s hunt was how exciting, engaging, and fun the brand is, not something I would have thought I would say about opera. Exploring their various social media pages allowed me to see the playful side of an art form that I thought was staid, stodgy, and, honestly, for old people.

And I suppose that’s the point. We need to find ways to make our clients stand out while aligning with their brand messages. I’m not the only one who thinks gamification is an important tool for that, y’all. After all, having a bunch of people running around a city, or posting to Facebook or Twitter, in your name, and having a great time doing it, isn’t a bad way to bring attention to your brand. And, Facebook graph search is about to make those “likes” and check-ins a lot more valuable. And who knows, with the upcoming changes, it might just be that thing that gets you more social attention than your competitors.

Considering hosting an online (or offline) scavenger hunt as a social media marketing campaign? If so, will you please invite me?!

The post Why Facebook Graph Search Will = More Scavenger Hunts (Yay!) appeared first on Portent.

With the new changes to Facebook Graph Search, the pages you like on Facebook will soon appear in search results. For most of us, there’s nothing to worry about. Declaring you “Like” How I Met Your Mother is just a sign you enjoyed the show’s witty writing before Barney and Robin got together… for the second time.

However, for one reason or another, you might have liked a page you shouldn’t have. If you’re uncomfortable with unwittingly shilling for companies you no longer support or if you just want to avoid expressing your love for anything embarrassing, here’s the best way to remove your unwanted page Likes:

How to find Facebook pages you’ve liked

1. Visit your profile and click the Likes app (it might be hidden under the application dropdown button).

2. Scroll to the bottom of your Likes page and click “Show Other Pages.”

3. If you’re like me and have gone on some major liking sprees, you might need to click on the “show more” button to see the complete list.

Over the past four years—Facebook pages have been around since 2009—I’ve liked around 300 different pages. I’m really into Ghostbusters, Disney World and social media, so don’t worry if you haven’t liked as many pages as I have.

To remove a page from your list, you’ll need to unlike it. Hover over a page title, click the Like button, and then select “Unlike.”

This is just a demonstration. Please keep liking Portent’s Facebook page.

If you have any troubles or need any other questions answered, feel free to leave me a comment or tweet at me at @SocialDoug.

The post How to Find Pages You Like on Facebook (and Unlike Them) appeared first on Portent.

What’s the big deal about Facebook Graph Search? It’s a common question this week, and while it doesn’t warrant a Notre Dame think tank disaster group, we should all care (at least a little) about Facebook’s new “smarter” search engine.

From businesses and Internet marketers to everyday Facebook users, this new way of search should give us all reason to reevaluate how we plan to use this search engine. Check out these three examples:

Why Internet marketers should care

Facebook’s ultimate goal with Graph Search isn’t difficult to figure out. They want to keep users engaged on Facebook with the hope that they will no longer rely on Google to discover new stuff.

One minor detail that was mostly overlooked during Facebook’s announcement is that Graph Search is a product of Facebook and Bing. The two engineering teams have been working together over the past two-and-a-half years on the current, yet clunky Facebook search experience.

With the new Graph Search, marketers can expect Facebook search to change to a two column result page that combines Facebook friend results with Bing results. We can already expect Facebook to feature their sponsored pages in Graph Search, but what’s to come of Bing ads in Facebook?

Image from Bing

Our best guess

If we know anything about Bing PPC, we can guess that advertisers will have very little control over where their ads will be served on Facebook. The most likely scenario is that Bing will serve ads from a new content network shared between Facebook, Yahoo! and Bing. Ultimately, this will increase Bing’s opportunities for ad impressions, but don’t count on Bing to make advertising any cheaper.

Why businesses should care

Graph Search is Facebook’s version of a recommendation search engine. It relies on a plethora of signals that include self pics, winky face status updates, check-ins and “Likes” to determine relevant search results, which will have an outrageously strong impact on local search.

Many industry leaders, like Matt McGee, editor at Search Engine Land, believe Graph Search might succeed thanks to Facebook’s billion-plus user base, provided that users find the experience appealing enough to break their Yelp and Google habits.

Welcome to the popularity contest

How many people actually talk about McCoy’s Firehouse Bar & Grill on Facebook? They totally should because it’s one of the best places to get a beer in Seattle’s Pioneer Square, but if users don’t Like or talk about a business on the social network, it won’t show up in search results.

Facebook is already an important signal in local SEO and the only way for local businesses to win in Graph Search is to increase engagement. The more likes, comments, pictures and mentions they receive, the more often their business and products appear in search results.

Local businesses can get a jump on optimizing their Facebook pages before Graph Search takes affect by following some of our local SEO tips for social networks. At a minimum, Facebook pages should clearly display the name, address, phone number of the business, and any other signals of trust like links to the website.

After optimizing the page for local search, business owners should curate a content schedule to regularly update the Facebook page with news and pictures about the business, as well as encouraging fans to upload their own photos and reviews. For more engagement ideas, we highly recommend using Rafflecopter for contests. Their widget is dead simple to build and the Rafflecopter blog is full of awesome ideas for social media promotions.

Facebook’s user agreement

Facebook’s page guidelines are long and boring, but page administrators should know Facebook bans any promotions that require users to upload a picture or status update on a Facebook page. In other words, page admins can’t incentivize Facebook fans to make updates.

As a wild prediction, I think Facebook might bend these rules in the future. It would be in their best interest to create new features like an Instagram/Facebook app that rewards fans for taking pictures of food. If Facebook really had its act together, it would partner with restaurants to show menu options and calorie counts, and maybe it would even share geo-target information on Instagram. They could call it something goofy like YummyPics… it’s a half-baked idea, but something like this could work.

Why Facebook users should care

To the generic Facebook user, Graph Search is a game-changer when it comes to privacy. Facebook hides behind the claim that, “No one can see anything that they wouldn’t have otherwise been able to see.“

While that might be true, millions of Facebook will soon realize all the embarrassing pages they liked in college are now public information on Graph Search.

What’s a Facebook user to do?

Fire up the flux capacitor and take a trip back in time to remove yourself from any pages or groups that might prevent you from volunteering with children.

Keep in mind, there’s also the situation where you liked a page for some reason, and it’s not offensive, but you just don’t want to be a free marketer/advertiser for that company. For the sake of you and your friend’s sanity, remove those likes.

(In a follow up post, I outline the steps to find and unlike unwanted pages on your Facebook profile. Check it out. You’ll like it.)

Facebook thinks you can’t opt out of Graph Search

Zuckerberg calls Graph Search the “third pillar of what Facebook is all about.” Facebook is betting big that users will continue to take pictures of their fusion pad thai and make updates about their favorite organic baby food, but will they? Or will the changes inherent in Graph Search have an impact on Facebook user’s Liking habits?

Is it worth Liking something on Facebook if it could haunt you in the future?

TL;DR Recap

When it comes to Graph Search, marketers should worry about Bing, businesses should worry about local search, users should worry about appearing in ridiculous search results, and Facebook should worry about people abandoning their social network.

Facebook Graph Search is still in beta, but here’s a link if you want to jump on Facebook’s waiting list.

How do you think this Facebook experiment is going to play out?

The post Who Should Care About Facebook Graph Search? (Hint: Everyone) appeared first on Portent.

This year’s presidential race continues to be a great marketing study: The niche brand with a universe problem versus the hesitant big brand. After the debate last week, both candidates had a huge burst of support on Facebook. Both President Obama and Governor Romney’s Facebook fan growth rate grew by 2x or more.

After that the data gets preeeetttty interesting:

Did the Obama campaign spam Facebook?

Someone check my numbers here, because I’d swear the Facebook data shows the Obama campaign adding 1.2 million fans on Facebook in a single day (10/8/12):

The Obama campaign added 1.2 million Facebook fans in one day.

I looked everywhere for an explanation, but couldn’t find any.

That naturally got me thinking “Spam.” Either a member of the Obama Campaign did a happy dance on Amazon Mechanical Turk and bought a ridiculous quantity of followers all at once, or an Obama opponent decided to see if she could blast his Facebook profile into being locked down. Dunno.

Looking at shares/fan, though, we didn’t find a huge drop. You’d expect 1.2 million new, worthless followers would pull down the average shares per follower. Not so here:

Barack Obama’s shares per fan didn’t fall, in spite of adding 1.2 million fans in a single day.

Sooo, either someone tried to spam and accidentally acquired a slew of fantastic, interested fans, or something huge happened 10/8/12 that I completely missed. Anyone?

The polling gap closes

Mitt Romney saw a huge rise in Facebook fan growth rate, too, but he saw it immediately following the debate:

Mitt Romney saw immediate improvement in his Facebook growth rate after the 10/3 debate.

That corresponds to his sudden rise in the polls.

What’s it all mean? His debate performance cracked the shell on his universe problem. He got in front of a lot more people, and appealed to them. The result was both Facebook growth and a rise in the polls.

Note: I’m not saying one caused the other. Just that they correspond. The interesting part of the data, to me, is how intertwined Facebook and polling data is this year.

What’s next

The Obama campaign saw their huge growth on 10/8. That corresponds to a fall in Governor Romney’s growth rate:

When Barack Obama had his huge surge in audience growth, Mitt Romney’s growth rate fell.

We’re still testing this theory, and it’s hard to tell if the one-day, 1.2 million fan surge is an anomaly or not. The model we’re building suggests another Obama surge in the polls is coming, but we’ll see. Some polls show Romney in the lead at this point. Others show Obama in the lead and pulling away again. Others indicate an increased chance that Elvis may enter the race. More on that as the data emerges.

Niche brand versus big brand

In our first report, we pointed out that the Romney campaign has a universe problem, while the Obama campaign faces the listlessness and inertia of any big brand. The first debate reinforced that. For whatever reason, the President looked, well, listless. He was extremely restrained, rarely responding to jabs from Governor Romney. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, came out on the attack, pushing hard to make his views known. That seems to have expanded his universe, as polling numbers quickly tilted in his favor:

That’s the danger of a conservative communications strategy, whether you’re a presidential candidate or a corporation. The Obama campaign has left the door open for Mitt Romney. Governor Romney’s breakout performance at the last debate moved him into a virtual tie with the President.

In social media and traditional media, this race is shaping up to be a contest between a contender with a small audience who needs a larger one, and an incumbent with a huge fan base that he can’t keep inspired: The niche brand that’s trying to break out, and the major brand that needs a wakeup call.

Debates are notorious for short-term bounce and long-term irrelevance. Will it stick? We’ll see. But the lesson for the Obama camp—and marketers— is pretty clear: If you play not to lose, you’ll probably do just that.

Tomorrow, I’ll analyze what the candidates said over the past week and audience response to their messages/styles.

The post Facebook political update: Debates, spam and a polling slam appeared first on Portent.

You may not know this yet, but there is a limit to how many of your fellow tweeters you can follow. I found out the hard way.

As a writer, I am a good observer. So when I joined Twitter, I watched how other writers handled their accounts. Writers follow (and are followed by) each other in droves. Some paranormal e-book authors follow 60,000 or more people. I began aggressively following other writers and literati thinking there was no limit to the inspiration available.

I was wrong.

“ Twitter limits following behavior [because] these limits help us improve site performance and reliability and help us make Twitter a nice place for everyone.” —Twitter

Aggressive is a bad word for Twitter. They use the word 4 times (out of 456 words) on their Following Rules and Best Practices Page. And never in a good way.

But when I say I follow other writers aggressively, I mean actively. I’ve sought out people with shared interests. A lot of them. Since June, I’ve followed 2,000 people I wanted to learn more about. And therein lies the problem. Twitter says I can’t follow anyone else until I have more followers. Here’s why that doesn’t make Twitter a nicer place for me.

I believe in the limits of my own importance

Being merely one human out of nearly 7,000,000,000 on this planet, I expect to notice more people than notice me. I think it’s weird when people have nearly the same number of followers as following—as if they are in a followback loop where they only want to know about people who like them first.

I currently follow three times as many people as follow me. I don’t think that’s because I’m boring. It’s because I like listening more than talking. Plus my following list covers many different topics and those tweeps may not share my interests.

Here’s who I follow and why:

• Marketers like SEO Chicks give me tips to do my day job better. Foreign marketers like Why Not Blue refresh my language skills while teaching me about SEO Montreal-style.
• A Dangerous Business and other travel bloggers fuel my dreams of someday using those language skills again.
• I learn about the publishing industry from agents, publishers, reviewers, and lit zines. I like being reminded of the people behind the good work at places like Melville House and Dalkey Archive.
• Other writers share my struggles and triumphs. Tweeting to Sarah Martinez about how much I enjoyed her book launch is a “thanks for the invite” and good promo for her.
• Visual artists and musicians offer different looks at creativity. BOMB Magazine posts archive interviews that hit all the right notes.
• Popular blogs like Huffington Post make sure I’m not totally clueless on the happenings of the world.
• Washington State DOT, Seattle Police, and local media give me the news I need right now.
• My friends and I support and promote each other in Twitter and real life. Ann Hedreen, Liza Wolff-Francis, Icess Fernandez, and Kim Brown all keep me grounded.

Most of those people will never follow me back. I don’t expect them to. But to get to follower/following parity which Twitter seems to want, I need a wide variety of strangers to follow me that I don’t plan to follow back. That just isn’t me…

I believe in community

I follow back. Not indiscriminately, but if you want to take time to get to know me, I’d like to get to know you too. We can do that on Facebook, but unfortunately you’ll have to make the first move on Twitter (and wait until I hit some magical unpublished ratio—PR and the Social Web says the magic formula is number of followers plus 10%—that means I can follow you back).

Although our day to day importance in each other’s lives may be small, I’m still glad to connect. The world is a lonely place without connections.

I believe in serendipity

Twitter is like Penn Station at rush hour. Somewhere in the cacophony is a voice telling an interesting story (a lot of them really), and I believe that Fate (and a little judgment on my part) will point me in the direction of the information and inspiration I crave. These “random” interactions prevent creative stagnation.

I believe in you

I don’t dump people I follow without good reason. Three or four tweets about how no one likes you or how you are the only important person in the word will get you dumped. And I block spammers. But mostly you’ll find me a pretty open and generous audience. Which means it’s nearly impossible to winnow down my following list so I can follow new people.

What do I do now?

Can I get around this follower limit? Yes. I could start dumping people I don’t LOVE (but I won’t). Or I could build lists of people I am interested in but don’t follow and then set up a stream in HootSuite, but why should I have to? Why should it be so difficult?

”If you’ve reached the account-based follow limit (2,000 users), you’ll need to wait until you yourself have more followers before you can follow additional users.” —Twitter

I can accept that I have to sit out following for a while (not that I have any choice). But it annoys the crap out of me that I can’t take an active aggressive role in building my Twitter feed. So, Destiny…will I get more followers or is everything I need already in my feed?

Are you wildly inspired by too many tweeps? How do you handle your follower/following ratio?

The post Why I Hate the Twitter Follow Limit appeared first on Portent.

Batten down the hatches, Google! The big bad Facebook has set its sights on you!

Or not.

Take a deep breath, everyone.

This is an awful lot of hype over something that only exists in Mark Zuckerberg’s mind. Here are 6 reasons to take a deep breath, hold on to your money, and stop measuring Google for a casket:

1. Lack of proof. Facebook’s current search technology is a laughingstock in the search community. Before I get all excited about a legitimate Google competitor, I need evidence Facebook has the know-how to not make an utter fool of themselves.
2. Lack of expertise. Search is really complicated. I won’t say it’s more complicated than building a social network, but I will say it’s very different. Where will Facebook get their expertise? Yes, a few Googlers have jumped ship. But that’s not enough. They need true search visionaries leading the team.
3. Spam. You can’t base a search engine purely on EdgeRank (part of Facebook’s authority/connection measurement algorithm). It’s far too easy to manipulate. If you think Google’s search results are riddled with spam, wait ’til you can rank #1 in Facebook Search with $200 and a Mechanical Turk account.
4. Privacy. A competitive Facebook search tool will have to capitalize on the wealth of user data they have. That will reveal huge, ongoing privacy issues we all previously ignored.
5. Other failures. Before Facebook talks search, they need a mobile app that loads in a reasonable time. And fix the blank squares photo issue. And figure out how to perfect their ad platform. And make up for their e-mail switch debacle. And… You get the picture. Search would be their biggest undertaking, ever. Better prove you can knock out the simple stuff first, guys.
6. Only a flesh wound. Even if Facebook succeeds, it will hardly ‘kill’ Google. Will it make a dent in their market share? Yes, and that’d be a really good thing. But it won’t do a company who’s name is now a synonym for ‘search’ any fatal damage.

Where’s the search?

If you want me to jump on the Facebook Search Bandwagon, show me something. Anything. Show me one sign that Facebook understands search. Show me search results that aren’t recycled from Bing. Demonstrate you can build and deploy a decent mobile app.

Right now, Facebook search is 100% pure vapor. Don’t take my word for it. Check out the Chicago Tribune:

“But it was Zuckerberg’s talk of search that had Wall Street analysts and technology insiders abuzz on Wednesday, even if they couldn’t agree on what exactly a Facebook search service would look like or how imminent such a service was.” —Chicago Tribune

Understand: I’m no Google fanboy. But the big G still has technology decades ahead of everyone else, and they’ve cornered the market on the best information discovery brains in the business. What, exactly, is Facebook’s ace in the hole here?

Discuss below. Or talk to me on Twitter

The post 6 reasons to ignore Facebook search (for now) appeared first on Portent.