Was Oreo's ‘Dunk in the Dark’ Tweet Really a Runaway Success?

I was involved in a discussion about the upcoming Super Bowl and the pros and cons of newsjacking in a Twitter chat recently when another participant, Diana Wolff, tweeted this:

And she's right, that tweet's been discussed and analysed and referred to ad-nauseum for the past two years. And while there's much to appreciate about the 'Dunk in the Dark' tweet, the real question is 'was it effective?' Did more people buy Oreos as a result of that tweet? Is that even the true measure of real-time marketing success?

Does sixteen thousand re-tweets correlate to positive social ROI?

This is hard to say, and really, only Oreo and their parent company Mondelez International are able to judge the true return on their Super Bowl 2013 efforts. In terms of financial results, the actual financial attribution of that tweet is cloudy, as noted in by Danielle Sacks in her Fast Company piece "Oreos Tags Pop Culture":

Since Oreo embraced culture, the brand's annual sales growth is up from the low double digits to more than 20%. But analysts attribute that to its expansion into emerging markets in Asia. It's very hard to prove that new-media campaigns increase sales. During the Grammys this year, viewers who tweeted #SendMeOreo received a box of limited-edition cookies in new flavors that landed in stores a week later. "In terms of revenue, it was the biggest limited-edition launch that we ever had," says [Janda] Lukin, Oreo's North American chief. But no one at the company can tell me how—or if—"Daily Twist," the Super Bowl tweet, and the Twist, Lick, Dunk app affected cookie sales. Asked specifically about the Super Bowl, Lukin admits, "There isn't a great way for us to directly link it."

Given there were so many campaigns and changes occurring around the same time, it's difficult to directly attribute that tweet to an increase in revenue. But it definitely generated coverage, every media outlet from Forbes to CNet to The Huffington Post praised the genius of the Oreos tweet, which was universally considered to have won the Super Bowl ad blitz – some even questioned whether that one tweet did more for the Oreos brand than the multi-million dollar Oreos commercial that aired during the game.

Definitely the cumulative presence of these campaigns has had a significant and lasting impact, and has helped keep the brand within the awareness of many consumers, so in that sense, 'Dunk in the Dark' was obviously a huge win. Though the correlation is not as straight forward as many might suspect.

Of course, sales alone may not be the true measure of the success of such coverage – it's possible that Oreos saw increased brand perception, became better placed in the market or within certain demographic brackets as a result. This, too, is very difficult to measure, and no doubt the flood of coverage Oreos has received as a result of that tweet (including the piece you're reading right now) has increased their overall brand awareness – but how beneficial has that one tweet been for brand sentiment?

Brand perception can be significantly influenced by a well-placed, real-time message. Arby's, for example, would have seen a major boost amongst a younger, hip audience when they sent this tweet in response to Pharrell Williams wearing a that now infamous hat at the Grammys:

That single tweet brought them significant recognition, and helped them reach an audience they may not have been able to otherwise – their brand perception definitely got a 'cool' boost in the reflection of that tweet. There're regular examples of brands utilising real-time response to benefit positive brand perception – just recently, Australian telecommunications giant Optus posted this to their Facebook account in response to a iPhone error which had caused the alarms of many of their customers phones to go off an hour earlier than set, due to a time zone glitch:

Of course, giving people a free coffee doesn't get them that hour of sleep back, but the extra effort to connect with their customers will have an impact on overall brand perception – it's no doubt better than just ignoring it and doing nothing at all.

So what about 'Dunk in the Dark'? Would that message have improved the perception of Oreos and made customers more aligned the brand? Outside of maybe making a few more people feel like eating some chocolate biscuits, there probably wasn't a significant increase in brand sentiment as a result of that message. It's possible, like Arby's, that they were able to reach a specific audience, through retweets and shares, that they'd otherwise not have hit, but again, how much would that perception reflect in the bottom line?

The question of effectiveness comes down to the specific people reached and the actions subsequently taken as a result of that exposure. The numbers themselves – re-tweets, followers and favourites – are not, in themselves, a true measure of success. As noted recently by Gary Vaynerchuck, metrics like follower counts don't necessarily correlate to success – reaching more people definitely increases your opportunities to convert, but getting through to just one person with the right message at the right time can be more successful than reaching 1000.

The discussion of 'Dunk in the Dark' and it's relative success, based on impressions and interactions alone, is the perfect illustration of were traditional broadcast focus collides with new-school targeting and analytics. In the past, the way to win at marketing was to hit as many people as you could, get as many eyeballs as possible looking at your stuff in order to increase the chances of reaching the right few. This is why blast radius is still seen as such a significant measure – but are impressions and reach really reflective of success? As big data becomes more embedded and we learn more about analytics, and how to link specific data points to profitable results, it's likely that bigger won't necessarily be seen as better when we reflect on marketing effectiveness.

Of course, exposure is, and always will be, of significant value, and research has shown that there are links between social interactions and website visits. And far be it for me to make a call on the success of 'Dunk in the Dark' – the only people who can do that are Oreos themselves – although it as interesting that for such a huge, massive, win, they didn't even try to replicate it, noting before the 2014 Super Bowl that they were 'going dark' this time round. No, the purpose of this post is to widen discussion of the metrics and what constitutes marketing success, particularly as brands gear up to wade into the trending currents of Super Bowl 2015.

Effectiveness is relative, it's up to us to correlate the data and show what it means in the wider scheme.

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Original source: Was Oreo's 'Dunk in the Dark' Tweet Really a Runaway Success?.
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Power of Visual Content Marketing and Brand Storytelling in a Nutshell

Are you tapping into the power of visual content marketing to tell your brand story? Visual marketing empowers brands and the people within them to share their business and personal stories and lives real-time. No longer is it required to have a full time, dedicated design team on staff to serve up a good healthy dose of visual content marketing for your audiences and clients to devour!

Now even small marketing teams can easily take photos with an iPhone or other smart phone, mobile device and use them to engage their audiences via the social networks such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs within seconds.

Visual marketing enable you to show your products without telling people about them. Viewers can then easily make their own decisions without feeling "sold" or pressured from you and your business. Let the visuals tell your story and help you close the sale!

Did you know that the human brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than the time it takes for the brain to decode text?

46.1% of people say a website's design is the number one criteria to determine the credibility of the company.

Visual marketing can often help you inspire, connect and engage with your audience more quickly and better than what a simple text message can do.

Check out this episode of the Social Zoom Factor podcast for a succinct definition and summary of how you can use visual content marketing in your business or to build your personal brand. Included are loads of statistics just in case you still or sold or have a colleague or executive than needs to hear the data before investing.

In this episode I put visual marketing in a nutshell for you with a goal of inspiring you to begin including visual marketing into your marketing strategies and tactics to drive improved results. If you are already using visual marketing but not seeing results, hopefully the podcast will inspire you to take it to the next level.

Definition of visual marketingWhy visual marketing?Benefits of using visuals to tell storiesHow visual marketing can help you close businessWhy it's becoming easier for marketing teams to use visual marketing without a dedicated design teamLoads of statistics on the power of visual marketing to inspire, connect with and engage audiences

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Original source: Power of Visual Content Marketing and Brand Storytelling in a Nutshell.
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IBM Study Shows What Consumers Want from Online and In-Store Personalization

In a recent article on this site, we discussed the value of personalization for marketers in website and email marketing design. The article focused on research that show how much consumers like personalization and some of the ways it could be implemented. A new study from IBM investigates this topic further. The IBM study shows the value of personalization, and more importantly, how to get consumers to give marketers the data they need to make personalization work.

The IBM study found that nearly half of US consumers want personalization in their online experience and many want it from in-store retailers as well. The study found that 48 percent of US consumers want on-demand, personalized promotions while shopping online, while 44 percent want the same in the store. The researchers felt that retailers hadn't fully met the challenge of creating the experience consumers want. According to IBM, though 43 percent of those surveyed said they prefer to shop online, only 29 percent reported making their most recent purchase online.

"With consumers switching seamlessly from online to the store it might appear that retailers have finally struck the right balance, but IBM's study identifies a significant gap between what shoppers want from retailers and what they are getting today," said Sarah Diamond, General Manager, IBM Global Business Services in a press release. "Retailers may not be doing enough to meet consumer expectations shaped by digital experiences outside of retail — from location-based services to preference-based apps. The good news is that this gap also indicates the potential of growth for retailers who can meet those consumer expectations."

Knowing that consumers like personalization is helpful, but the greater challenge is getting them to give up their information. Many consumers are extremely wary of giving their information to companies. Giving your email to the wrong entity can lead to large amounts of spam messages and security risks. Even before the internet, putting one's name and address on a list could lead to piles of unwanted mail. Marketers must be willing to overcome these consumer fears in order to make personalization work. It may take some effort, but it will lead to more loyal customers.

The study found that one way online and in-store retailers can get customers to give out data is to offer text messages with personalized offers. IBM reported that the majority(54%) of US consumers see potential benefits in sharing their mobile information to receive texts from retailers. Not only do they see the value, many (42%) are willing to give their phone numbers to retailers to get these benefits.

Remember, there are laws regulating how business can use text messages. The retailer must have permission amongst other things. Read this article read about the most recent changes to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

Marketers must also keep in mind that just because technology makes something possible, doesn't mean that consumers will like it. Mobile devices have the potential to provide marketers with a lot of useful information that can be used for personalization, but doing that makes many customers concerned. The researchers at IBM noted that though 42 percent of US consumers see the potential benefits in sharing their locations with retailers via GPS only 28 percent are willing to do so.

Consumers may not want to share their GPS location directly with retailers, it's still possible to use location-based marketing. Most mobile apps and ad networks offer ad targeting based on location, marketers just wouldn't be able to use them to provide personalized specials to a particular user's device. All the same, being shown a generic ad for a retailer near their location is good enough for most people.

Besides the information about personalization and data, the IBM study had other findings that are useful for marketers. For example, the study noted that 60 percent of shoppers said it's important to be able to find out if an item is in stock before going to the store.

Marketers can read the entire study from IBM on their website. And read this article for more information on how marketers can merge their online and in-store experience.

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Original source: IBM Study Shows What Consumers Want from Online and In-Store Personalization.
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How Your Brand Can Win the 2015 Super Bowl

So you couldn't find it in your advertising budget to throw down the $4.5 million for a 30-second commercial in Super Bowl XLIX like these guys? We understand. But we're also here to let you know that you can still come out on top through alternative advertising and marketing methods on social media during the big game.

There are plenty of ways to ensure that your brand message will be heard through all the noise of the Super Bowl on social media, but you have to commit ahead of time. Think about it-there are 184 million viewers that could potentially come in contact with your brand. But you have to have a strong brand voice and a solid game-plan (pun intended) in place so that your content is sharable. Are you on board? Let's engage.

When it comes to big events like the Super Bowl, a good rule of thumb is that 80 percent of potential content should already be created, approved, and placed into specific draft folders before the game starts. How is that possible? Sit down with your creative team and write out scenarios that are likely to happen during the game. Have content pre-approved for interceptions, touchdowns, questionable calls, etc. as well as content ready about key players (not only their football capabilities- think mannerisms, celebration dances, physical traits) so that when something happens your team is already prepared. It is also important to think of a few scenarios that could happen that DON'T have to do with football (just in case). This content should link back to your brand in a creative way so that not only is your brand being relevant, but it is at the same time being new and fun. When it comes to interacting during important live events, it is better to overestimate the content you may need than to be scrambling for content.

Butterfinger did a great job of this in the 2014 Super Bowl by immediately posting pre-made content when the game started out with a safety. With 80 percent of content pre-planned and pre-approved, you are left with 20 percent of your content to be reactive and in the moment of when things are happening. This is when your creative team comes into play. They are able to focus on the more unexpected events and turn them into something your brand can capitalize on.

Long gone are the days of secrecy that brands used leading up to the Super Bowl. Instead, companies today are choosing to engage fans earlier on and create deeper story telling lines that they can share with users on social media in order to build more hype about their brand during the event. Let your following know that you will be participating in the "social" Super Bowl without explicitly saying so by releasing content before the big game. Engage your fans through polls on who you think will win on Facebook, hosting contests, and posting creative content that are appropriate for your target audience to "like". The most important thing to remember about pre-game content is that it should give your audience something to look forward to- so entertain them!

Victoria's Secret Angels Play Football- Pre-Game Content

This is a given, but brands that come out on top during Super Bowls past have almost always had Social Media Campaigns in place. Theme and tone needs to stay consistent, and messaging should be clear. We aren't going to go in depth into how to create a social media campaign, because you already know how to do that. However, this year there are two important concepts that you need to keep in mind while posting your content on Facebook.  

- Advertise on Facebook with their "Big Game" Segment- This year, Facebook is capitalizing on the Super Bowl by creating a "Big Game" targeting segment that allows brands to reach more people that are engaging in Super Bowl conversation. According to Marketing Land, Facebook stated that the segment will "include people beyond just football fans, including those liking, commenting and sharing content related to party planning, recipes, flatscreen TV purchases, conversations about TV commercials and other topics surrounding the game." The article also stated that "The segment will be updated frequently ¬– growing and changing dynamically as more people become engaged with Super Bowl topics– in the remaining days before the game and throughout Super Bowl Sunday. This is something to keep in mind if you are planning on releasing "football themed" ads on the book. Find the segment through the Facebook interface in the "Behaviors" section under the "Seasonal and Events" category.- Plan to BOOST- If you believe that one of your ads or posts are especially strong, and are getting a lot of engagement on them, plan to boost your post to keep the momentum going. Facebook- 1, Wallets- 0. Still worth it.

Every brand wants its "Oreo Moment", but you aren't going to achieve it unless your creative team brings its A-game to play on the real time engagement field. If you want to score big time, you're going to have to have a social-command center. Have a real-time engagement strategy in place so that theme, tone, and voice are all consistent on your reactive posts. Also ask yourself "Who will share this post and why" for every post you put out. Here are some other tips when it comes to real-time engagement during the big game.  

- The most appropriate channel to flood with real-time updates is Twitter- don't flood your other social channels with all of your updates.-Tweet about the game itself, but always ask yourself how things can relate back to your brand and try to apply that as often as possible. Ask your fans to engage with simple things like "RT if both feet were in" tweets and other applicable requests during questionable calls. Always include hashtags.-Get weird. The super bowl is a chance for you to be a little more edgy with the content that you are posting. Make sure to monitor competition's tweets, and keep other brands in mind. Follow what is trending and JUMP IN ON THE CONVERSATION!

In good-hearted fun, call people and other brands out! If your brand can boast about something and relate it to the game, do it! If there is another JC Penny incident, call them out! Engage with competition! Be clever! Make people talk about your brand. Make people laugh.

•Know your target audience…and from that predict what their behavior is going to be. Will they be watching the game with their family, or getting rowdy at the bar with their friends. From that prediction, give them more of what they want to see. Hint: it must be entertaining. Another hint: drunk people love dumb humor.
• Dumb content doesn't come out on top just because it is dumb. These ads had a lot of thought go into them.
• If someone else has already done it, come up with something different.
• Have fun with it.
• Don't forget to measure your efforts so that next year you can be more successful.

Good Luck! 

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Original source: How Your Brand Can Win the 2015 Super Bowl.
http://www.jretechnology.com

Super Bowl Advertising: Emotional Engagement Beats Entertainment - Always

Fewer than half of Super Bowl XLIX's advertisers will score big on their considerable investments, according to the 13th annual Super Bowl Ad Engagement Surveyconducted by Brand Keys.

When it comes to Super Bowl ad playbooks, brands hope ads will score big in five ways: 1) big audiences, 2) big creative, 3) big buzz, and 4) big social networking, and 5) big levels of emotional brand engagement. That last one is most important! It's a leading-indicator of consumers' positive behavior toward the brand in the only arena that counts – the real-world marketplace. The Super Bowl, one of the most-watched events in broadcasting, has long been a showcase for innovative advertising creativity, but in an attempt to level the ad playing field, marketers have increasingly moved to create up-front buzz for their ads, a tacit recognition that it's a given their ads will get noticed – along with everyone else's. Sure, brands need to entertain if they want buzz, but today, if brands want a real return, it isn't enough just to entertain, they need to emotionally engage consumers with their ads.  Do that, and consumers come away feeling the brand better meets their expectations for their Ideal in the category where the brand competes. That's what real brand engagement is all about, and way different than entertainment or methodsof engagement.  Assessments collected via mobile software from 2,705 men and women measured social networking activities for 26 brands reported in the media to be Super Bowl advertisers calculating consumers' emotional engagement for the brand itself, the levels of anticipated advertising entertainment (according to social interactions and buzz), and the brand within the context of the Super Bowl broadcast. Results were perceptually mapped to identify where consumers saw the brand falling, identifying whether consumers felt the brand will engage andentertain, entertain only, engage but not entertain or neither engage nor entertain. Each combination results in a different in-market outcome for the brand and for this year's results, just click here. It turns out that only 46% of the brands were assessed by consumers as both engaging and entertaining (only 12 of the 26 brands), slightly lower than the 12-year historical average of 50%. Those included Pepsi, WeatherTech, Doritos, GoDaddy, and Dove Men+Care. According to social networking inputs, brands assessed to be highly entertaining but with low engagement levels included Budweiser, Coke, and McDonald's. Agencies and marketers all pretty much assume their ads will be entertaining, but advertising really shouldn't be judged only by entertainment value or related social network activities, but how it ultimately performs in the marketplace. Does the ad emotionally engage and build brand equity?  Does it engage enough to drive sales? If so, you'll see positive bottom line impact – even if the advertising wasn't as entertaining as envisioned. A brand that can both engage and entertain is a real Super Bowl winner. With 30-second spots selling for a reported $4.5 million plus, marketers need a new game plan when it comes to ad effectiveness and ROI. Monday-morning creative quarterbacking is always fun. Ad entertainment and social networking reviews generate lots of chatter, traditional and digital. But these days that's not enough. On this particular Sunday, when a brand gets into people's living rooms and on their computer or mobile device screens, it doesn't matter how many consumers tweet, like, or share if, ultimately, it doesn't increase emotional brand engagement levels, positive consumer behavior, and sales. Otherwise what brands have produced are very short, very expensive movies!

And sticking with this Sunday's theme, it's worth remembering that there may not be an "I" in "team," but there is one in "ROI."

Visit our YouTube channel to learn more about Brand Keys methodology, applications and case studies.

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Original source: Super Bowl Advertising: Emotional Engagement Beats Entertainment - Always.
http://www.jretechnology.com

Content Marketing Minds: Land Rover and William Boyd

Not every piece of content marketing that I'm going to bring to you is going to be a mega-popular viral sensation. Some are going to be the experimental ads that are pushing the limits of content marketing.

The Land Rover and William Boyd partnership is just one such example. The iconic SUV and off-road manufacturer paired up with the famed novelist of post-Ian Fleming James Bond fame to bring you some branded content. Great storytelling is how this content succeeds, read on for a story!

When you think "Land Rover" you probably think one of two things:

Rugged, unstoppable, independence creating off-road vehicles from jolly old England

Rugged, unstoppable, grocery getters for rich moms and footballers from jolly old England

With this content marketing campaign, Land Rover are trying to get you to think more about the former, and less about the latter. Enter William Boyd, with a 17,000 word short story that features an opportunity to drive about in a rugged vehicle…that just happens to be a Land Rover.

The trailer for the campaign sets the story up beautifully:

You don't get dialogue like that in a McDonald's ad!

If you're looking at this and seeing that there are only 60,000-ish views and being underwhelmed, you should be. There was so much potential to take people on a trip through video here, but it was never meant to be a YouTube hit. There was another goal in mind.

Below the video you'll spot a link to https://thevanishinggame.com/. Head over there yourself and the story will unfold as text scrolling up the screen while the narrator from the YouTube video tells you his story.

It also features a changing background with images of the area in England where the story is set. (For some reason my screenshots would not pick this up.)

The is, perhaps, the strongest example of branded storytelling that I have come across. This isn't a 2 minute video that you watch and walk away from. This is involved. It's not viral, it's personal. It's a journey you take…with Land Rover. Their logo is always up in the corner, after all.

As a bit of a writer myself, I see this as an excellent opportunity for writers to get paid, people to get stories for free, and ads to be made. In short, if you're interested in doing an ad like this, my contact information is at the bottom. To get serious, the story told is absolutely engaging. Those in the ad world talk about brand storytelling all the time. It's a concept that involves everything from your logo to your packaging. This, however, is storytelling with a brand.

Did you look closely at the video? It was released 2 months ago. Is this your first time hearing about this? I'd wager that it is. I feel that this ad has staying power and will continue to be a story that is told for a longer lifespan than the most viral of videos. It didn't hit the Internet hard and set it on fire. It's a slow burn.

To demonstrate this, you can still go on Twitter and see people talking about it.

Very nice example of storytelling: The Vanishing Game by William Boyd. https://t.co/Hfv8tRmqTA / @LandRoverUSA

— Zofie (@zofie) January 26, 2015

Decent #Storytelling and narrative depth in times of constant restlessness and fuss. #WellStoried by @LandRover | http://t.co/e7ejKWR9F1

— Jan Götze (@goetze85) January 16, 2015

Can you say that about the big viral hit of November 2014 beyond analysts offering up their opinions? I really doubt that. This may be a content marketing campaign that has serious legs.

The entire campaign was dead in the water when it comes to social buzz. They didn't do much to push a hashtag to use. There's nothing on the website about sharing. Overall, it felt too much like a book that was put online.

It could have felt like an interactive, cross-platform, experience that you shared and enjoyed with friends right from the moment you hit the first page of The Vanishing Game. There just wasn't a big enough push, or any direction given, to get that to happen. Here's the last time Land Rover shared it online:

Have you discovered #TheVanishingGame? Visit http://t.co/E3lgG7bxGP for an interactive experience from @LandRoverUSA

— Land Rover (@LandRover) January 2, 2015

Thirteen retweets…thirteen! They seriously need to up their social game if they want to create and effectively use content marketing in this way.

The Vanishing Game succeeded at its title – it vanished, and nowhere near enough people saw this excellent example of content marketing. With a harder social push, a greater YouTube presence, and some more hype, this could have been a really special moment in content marketing. As it stands, it was a very interesting experiment that I hope more brands try out (preferably with me!).

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Original source: Content Marketing Minds: Land Rover and William Boyd.
http://www.jretechnology.com

#SMTPowerTalk 1: Does Social Business Make Sense?

There are so many intuitive arguments for social business models and social business practices that the fact that they are still not a thing is totally counterintuitive. Either we are missing something critical regarding the benefits of the social business model or it is simply an idea too far. The kind of thing that sounds great as a concept but proves unworkable in practice. Answering just that question was the job of Gideon Rosenblatt. A former Microsoft executive, social business owner, TEDx speaker and author, Gideon is a veteran in how business is done on both sides of the social business divide. In this year's monthly #SMTPowerTalk, we focus on some of the truly difficult questions. We look at the transformative elements in social media marketing and social business models, examine where legacy business still works well enough as to remain mostly untouched and look, with each monthly show to strip back the layers of marketing-speak, peel back the warm, fuzzy concepts that make us all feel good and ask: does it work? If not why not? If not yet, when? If you're interested in bursting past the same-old marketing mantras and the lip-service homage to concepts that are reiterated on social media platforms just because it's fashionable, then the new, augmented and unadulterated #SMTPowerTalk experience should be the scaffolding you use to build better branding and marketing practices across the web. In this month's show, Gideon discussed the importance of structure and discipline when building a true social business, we clarified what a social business really is (hint: it is not one that has a Twitter, Facebook and G+ presence) and we then looked at the actionables that are required to make it happen. This provides a formula of sorts, but the path, as Gideon points out, is not easy and for good reason. You can catch the conversation around this here. Take the dive and watch the entire Hangout On Air and let us know what you think with the hashtag: #SMTPowerTalk. The #SMTPowerTalk series of Hangouts are announced first on the Social Media Today Google+ Page. Click here to join, if you haven't already and be kept up to date of events critical to your marketing. 

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Original source: #SMTPowerTalk 1: Does Social Business Make Sense?.
http://www.jretechnology.com

Does Social Engagement Affect Search Results?

Can social comments add more authority and semantic search value than many marketers truly appreciate? These were among the questions on my mind when I sought advice from a handful of connections in GPlus (who just happen to also represent some of the top minds in Semantic Search).

As a result, below, you'll see a transcript from one of the most insightful G+ conversations I've been a part of, complete with some revealing (and common sense) insights into what makes the comments you receive on your content so valuable… and what to watch out for if you want to keep comments from accidentally hurting your content.

Participating in the discussion are: Ammon Johns, Stephan Hovnanian, David Amerland, Bruce Marko, David Kutcher, Teodroa Petkova, Aaron Bradley, Bill Slawski, Sergio Redondo and Frank Gainsford.

First, a quick word about how we got to where we are. Comments by Frank Gainsford on another blog post inspired the idea for this thread, and then responses from Frank, Bill Slawski, Ammon Johns, Stephan Hovnanian, Teodora Petkova, Bruce Marko, David Kutcher, Sergio Redondo, and David Amerland all helped to flesh the idea out. I'm incredibly grateful to all of them.

Without further delay, let's talk semantics. It all started when I posed these questions…

Preliminary Questions, re: Semantic Social Value.

What would consider to be the most significant semantic advantage to having a large number of comments on a social post?Do you see a correlation between this (from your answer above) and SERP results/trends you're seeing lately?Can you imagine a system, in the near future, where marketers will attempt to game social engagement to improve their SERPs?Is the semantic nature of social commenting strong enough to affect search rankings in tightly contested or competitive markets?In your opinion, do commenting tools such as Disqus, IntenseDebate, and LiveFyre improve or lessen opportunities to build semantic value, trust or authority?a. What's the most important question I missed? b. May I add your question to the finished questionnaire?

For the finished piece, I would like to arrive at 10 final questions with answers to share. The final 10 may not include my questions (in case I've missed the good ones).

Feel free to answer as thoroughly as you need to.

It starts out all polite and a bit light before ramping up into an open and thoughtful discussion between Semantic peers. Because of that, I've optied to share it without editing. Enjoy.

Randy Milanovic qualifier on #1, by large number of comments are you measuring by # of comments or length of discussion?

I'm assuming discussion and participants, however diced. Long discussion meaning many entries. Perhaps answers could include those particulars?

Agree with Stephan Hovnanian? on #1, large number of "good job" is different than lengthy posts expanding the subject discussion. With #5, Google+ Commenting?

I had considered adding Gplus Commenting (a ringer!) However, in my own research before adding Disqus to my site I discovered Gplus commenting is limited to Google products.

I also get curious not just about the contents of the comments, but the author as well. If I can get a known subject matter authority engaging in the comments will that contribute semantic social value and/or affect SEO?

^ I think you just hit the nail on the head David

Randy Milanovic? there is a hack method to include g+ commenting to non-Google websites/platforms

Only for WP as far as I know. Call me chicken, but I'm wary of hacks. Brawwwk, brawk…

Randy Milanovic? 3 lines of code: html container, javascript include, include element.

Q1 – Having a range of comments increases the likelihood that a sufficient range of answers addresses the topic of the social post, including (1) narrowing down its topic to meaningful segments, (2) broadening its range in a way that might capture as much of the whole of it as possible, (3) raising as many attributes that are related and meaningful as possible with repetitive answers showing which elements may be the most important or at least come across that way.

At some point, having too many answers might act to provide too much information, and some of it misleading information.  I think of I. A. Richards experiment with Modern Practical criticism, which showed that there are a number of ways people commenting on something may respond to it, and some of those aren't how you might think they would respond, and might not necessarily be helpful.

How do we follow that up with anything meaningful? ^^^

I saw a post earlier today (I think) from Barry Swartz talking about Panda 4 negatively impacting his site and Google telling him his comments were "possibly" the cause. The assumption was the comments outweighed the content and many were poor quality, tipping the quality factor into the yucky. Anyone else see that?

Bill Slawski that's what I'm looking for. Real insights and knowledge. Thank you. Only 5 more to go.

1) collaborative ownership of the discussion, which could translate to both the topic and its contributors referencing it again in other areas of the web.

2) I'm not tracking anything like that (not really my wheelhouse compared to others on this thread). 

3) there are already cliques on social media which extend to comments, shares, and off social to blog posts. I don't see how gaming this is sustainable because eventually the extended network that benefits from these semantic signals gets encapsulated within the clique.

4) I doubt it. If the competitive market is active on social, you'll have a higher threshold to make any impact if it's even possible at all. If the market is not active on social, the extended network that benefits from semantic signals isn't logged in so they never see it, even though you won't have to do as much work to get social comments to make the impact.

5) I think they help actually because they help discovery which could lead to networks among users, which build trust and authority.

6) how would you measure this in the first place? (To which I don't know the answer)

Clique as in small group?

Q1. What would consider to be the most significant semantic advantage to having a large number of comments on a social post?

A1. The most significant semantic advantage to a relevant set of comments in a comment thread is much as it always was – it adds extra words, alternate phrasing, and related topics to a page.  This was also true in 1995.

Q2. Do you see a correlation between this (from your answer above) and SERP results/trends you're seeing lately?

A2. I have long seen a correlation between rankings on words repeated in comments.  In recent times I have been seeing more advantage to 'concept' type search (i.e. semantics) through adding more related but not necessarily "precisely on topic" comments.

Q3. Can you imagine a system, in the near future, where marketers will attempt to game social engagement to improve their SERPs?

A3. Actually, I've known people doing this for as far back as I can recall.  Of course, the 'social engagement' metric they were trying to gain was visits and links, but these are both 'engagement' signals even where comments are absent.  One could easily point to thousands of poorer SEO companies buying or faking 'likes' and other social signals for a decade or so.

Back in the heyday of forums, people would create sock-puppet accounts and play a tag-team game, where one account would ask a question that naturally led to a link drop from the second as an on-topic reply.  This also happened on blog comments.

And I knew of several bloggers that faked their own comments to make it seem as though there were an engaged audience in the hopes it would entice further engagement.  Gaming social engagement indeed, as far back as I can recall.

Q4. Is the semantic nature of social commenting strong enough to affect search rankings in tightly contested or competitive markets?

A4.  Only, so far, in regard to the words used and added to the page, or in the links gained through any other page that is crawlable, be that on any social platform or blog, etc.

Q5. In your opinion, do commenting tools such as Disqus, IntenseDebate, and LiveFyre improve or lessen opportunities to build semantic value, trust or authority?

A5.  In that comments themselves add value, they do indeed add value.  Trust and authority, not so much, as yet.  However, embedding G+ comments into a page may indeed have an added element of trust or authority, since these are a little more closely linked to verified accounts.

6a. What's the most important question I missed? 6b. May I add your question to the finished questionnaire?

A6.  Would you like a beer, Ammon? :o)

#craft perchance?

Ammon Johns perhaps a post-Hummingbird angle?

Only really in Q2, and addressed in the answer.

In all, Hummingbird in terms of SEO is still more evolution than revolution, though it has made specific keywords less important.  Hummingbird has nothing to do with Social per se.

Am I to understand Hummingbird's jump to semantic was vapour Ammon Johns?

No, not at all, although there were synonyms in search prior to Hummingbird.  Hummingbird is indeed about semantics.

It just is not about Social.

Whether others add the words in comments, or whether I write a page using all those words makes no difference to Hummingbird (but other parts of Google put more weight on content in the article than in the comments).

Reply Hope it helps:

1. What would consider to be the most significant semantic advantage to having a large number of comments on a social post?

A1. I think it's not a matter of quantity but quality of these comments when speaking about semantics. And now my question: when you say 'social post', do you refer to a post (aka. update) published on any social network or an 'engaged post'?

2. Do you see a correlation between this (from your answer above) and SERP results/trends you're seeing lately?

A2. Good comments add value to posts. If these good comments use words semantically related to the content of the post, they are adding more semantic value. You can find a lot of sources on the Internet that prove the correlation between 'good engaged posts' and better rankings.

3. Can you imagine a system, in the near future, where marketers will attempt to game social engagement to improve their SERPs?

A3. Very probably, but it will need to be strict with the user behaviour (aka. marketers practices).

4. Is the semantic nature of social commenting strong enough to affect search rankings in tightly contested or competitive markets?

A4. I think it might. When you find a niche where almost all of the best players share the same behaviour about their strategies, the answer from their users when interacting with their contents must be a turning point. If users comments in a wise way, adding semantic value to a post, this might be a strong signal to search engines.

5. In your opinion, do commenting tools such as Disqus, IntenseDebate, and LiveFyre improve or lessen opportunities to build semantic value, trust or authority?

A5. I think these systems give the possibility to give credits and value to users who comments in a good way. They create a interconection between comments left in different pages from the same user, so this user could become a 'commenting authority'. If a post have a good amount of 'commenting users' (and here we are speaking about quality+quantity), this might rank better than similar posts with less 'commenting users'.

6a. What's the most important question I missed? 6b. May I add your question to the finished questionnaire?

A6. How can a user become and be recognized as a 'commenting authority'?

And one recommendation for this quiz:  Tihomir Petrov

Thank you Sergio Redondo. A1: while any post (in social or blog) may be considered, I'm my mind was an update within a social platform.

Cliques, yes small groups, like the ones who share each other, link to each other, no matter what.

And damn, I am out of my league here, thank you Ammon Johns? Sergio Redondo? Bill Slawski? for these answers, I'm learning a lot on this thread

Thanks Randy Milanovic . And excuse me for this error: in A5, when I say 'commenting users' I mean 'commenting authorities'.

As Ammon noted:  A1. The most significant semantic advantage to a relevant set of comments in a comment thread is much as it always was – it adds extra words, alternate phrasing, and related topics to a page.  This was also true in 1995

There are other signals that can be looked at as well by a search engine, when it comes to things like these, such as a term frequency*Inverse document frequency to understand how unique and how rare the words might be in a comment,  and some analysis of how related those words are to an overall theme.

I wrote a post in 2011 about a patent published at WIPO titled "How Google Might Rank User Generated Web Content in Google + and Other Social Networks".  It looks at a number of additional signals as well to assess the values of comments, and to possibly even gauge a reputation score for an author.

Q2 (2. Do you see a correlation between this (from your answer above) and SERP results/trends you're seeing lately?)

It really impossible to see inside the black box and tie one of many pieces to others. There are also a very wide range of algorithms potentially in use that may or may not be in use that could impact rankings for terms, phrases, themes.

Q3 (3. Can you imagine a system, in the near future, where marketers will attempt to game social engagement to improve their SERPs?)

It's hard not to imagine that happening, and it likely has been for over a decade.  Marketers are likely going to try to increase a "share of mind" about a product or service that they are being paid to promote regardless of whether or not it might have a direct impact upon search results.  That it in possibly could, is in many cases, an additional bonus.

I've been trying to create pages that visitors not only use to sign up for services or goods from, but also are likely to refer friends to, link to, talk about socially with others both online and offline, and so on.  A marketer who isn't doing things like this, isn't marketing.

Q4 (4. Is the semantic nature of social commenting strong enough to affect search rankings in tightly contested or competitive markets?)

I'm not quite sure I understand what question is being asked here.  What is "the semantic nature of social commenting?" Is the question referring to things such as Google connecting the accounts of people who have added each other to their circles, so that for one of those connected people, the other might see their posts or posts that they have shared or endorsed, through a connection that a search engine could recognize, such as a FOAF connection between the two? And that those posts/shares/endorsements might act to boost results as if they were personalized?

Q5 (5. In your opinion, do commenting tools such as Disqus, IntenseDebate, and LiveFyre improve or lessen opportunities to build semantic value, trust or authority?)

I haven't personally used any of these on a site that I run, and can't claim to have any opinion on them. I'm not being paid to endorse them (and really don't want to be), and would much rather answer a question about Google+ comments or even more the simple default commenting system that WordPress offers and probably is used by a much wider audience than these third party tools.

Randy Milanovic thanks one more time for this nice nice discussion. Here's my part. Now diving into other people's comments.

1. What would consider to be the most significant semantic advantage to having a large number of comments on a social post?

Relationships. Something more, mapped relationships. And let's not forget to look at semantic search and technology holistically, they are not absolute, they serve a purpose. More comments mean more engagement, context and well reflected dynamics of things.

2. Do you see a correlation between this (from your answer above) and SERP results/trends you're seeing lately?

Large number of comments per se might mean everything But yes, I see a correlation between reinforced relationships (i.e. strong social signals) and SERP.

3. Can you imagine a system, in the near future, where marketers will attempt to game social engagement to improve their SERPs?

Of course, many will try to game the system. But, gaming it they will have to transcend to the light side – because faking it the will make it. Gaming value and trust is a paradox. No need for that. A "first" place means nothing if the client is not satisfied.

4. Is the semantic nature of social commenting strong enough to affect search rankings in tightly contested or competitive markets?

It is the the  tightly contested or competitive markets that social listening can do miracles And social listening means semantic search adequacy (if the results from the listening are well read and used)

5. In your opinion, do commenting tools such as Disqus, IntenseDebate, and LiveFyre improve or lessen opportunities to build semantic value, trust or authority?

I believe they improve the opportunities to build semantic value by giving a space for people to express what's on their mind, to participate in the communication, to be nods themselves (spreading the word and the relationships further)

6a. What's the most important question I missed? 6b. May I add your question to the finished questionnaire?

How social signals will affect the communication between things in the IoT

Would semantic search make the numbers not count?

Yes, you may.

6a. What's the most important question I missed? 6b. May I add your question to the finished questionnaire?) How would you define  A "Semantic Social Value" as related to comments"?  Does it need to boost ranking values, or can it do something even more positive such as being a source of authority to things such as knowledge bases or question-answering services? You can add this one to the finished questionnaire if you would like.

Randy Milanovic 1. What would consider to be the most significant semantic advantage to having a large number of comments on a social post? – From a semantic analysis point of view every comment (and commenter) is assessed through a four-attributes filter that looks a little like this. In addition the comments themselves, as already mentioned by everybody, add breadth and depth. There is the inherent risk of too much breadth derailing the post's value by weakening its overall domain attribution (i.e. making it weak) but that really comes down,again, to the assessment of the individual commenter and, ultimately, the building of relationships across the social web.

2. Do you see a correlation between this (from your answer above) and SERP results/trends you're seeing lately?  Yes, when the comments end up being even better than the original post. In that regard the post was key to eliciting the comments and everything is synthesized into a really valuable whole. If the comments are not relevant the value of the post is deprecated.

3. Can you imagine a system, in the near future, where marketers will attempt to game social engagement to improve their SERPs? Marketers always look for shortcuts. It's the norm of all human economic behaviour. Semantic search is informed by an ever increasing array of signals none of which, on their own. work well (pretty much like in Real Life). This means that there are no real viable shortcuts. It requires as much effort to game the system as to do it all properly.

4. Is the semantic nature of social commenting strong enough to affect search rankings in tightly contested or competitive markets? All other things being equal strong social commenting can become a strong corroborative signal in terms of quality and value which can make the defining difference.

5. In your opinion, do commenting tools such as Disqus, IntenseDebate, and LiveFyre improve or lessen opportunities to build semantic value, trust or authority? Google actively mines the social web for identity signals which it uses in its entity graph. Comments in different systems can play a significant part in this, particularly as Google scales the process across the web. The question right now is how advanced (and therefore valuable to the end user) that system is. It's a long term strategy from a commenter point of view. From the perspective of a comment, relevant comments have the ability to increase the value of a post and significantly increase its semantic weight.

6a. What's the most important question I missed? 6b. May I add your question to the finished questionnaire? 6a. In a semantic web where quality, a unique identity and real connection and relationships are key do any of our step-by-step here's how-to-do this suggestions really matter?

6b. yes.

Bill Slawski Q4 clarification (I hope): It appears there're 2 camps when it comes to social engagement as a ranking factor – at least insofar as there's direct impact. Not to inject my own assumptions, but I can't fathom a world where comments, likes, plusses, favourites and the like could not impact a piece of contents 'value', even if it is to simply add bulk as Mike suggested earlier. In case I've worded the question improperly, in open to modify it with your help.

Bill Slawski Q5 clarification: I suppose WP's commenting system should be included. I mentioned those as examples simply because they are gaining steam as alternatives to the standard Name, Email, Web, Comment, Submit, Moderate, Display model I've found limiting to engagement and ride with spambots. I didn't include Google's for 2 reasons, a) I feel it's a ringer, and b) it is not available outside of Google properties (except for the hack discussed earlier).

Ladies and Gentlemen, would you all be interested in answering the other participants' questions? Essentially morph the 'what did I miss' question into a second bank if much better questions – possibly even a second post?

David Amerland am I seeing that there's a sweet spot for comments… Enough to bolster the original piece, but not enough to overshadow it?

Randy Milanovic it really comes down to value. Write a post on semantic search and get Bill Slawski and Ammon Johns  to comment on it at length and, depending on the sentiment of what they say (which is now also mined) it's a strong signal that your post is of value and it has now become even more valuable so it's noteworthy. If you had a hundred profiles that usually share jokes and memes come by and say "great, wow, thank you" it would mean the opposite. So really, comments play a strong co-creational part in the original post and everything revolves around real connections and quality, which is a long way of saying "Yes" to what you just said.

Sometimes in search, you'll see a highly ranked result on Yahoo Answers or similar. The original post was just a question, and doesn't in itself have the value. All of the value is in the comments and interaction.

For the first question I would say the more robust the comments the more authority is ascribed to the post, thus the more visible it becomes, especially in the context of who is commenting.

Right now the ability of the semantic Internet to derivate meaning from value in comments is limited though constantly evolving. It can tell who is talking though and if you have a couple of experts discussing their wheelhouse in your thread then it either absolutely effects ranking and visibility or the semantic Internet arguably doesn't exist.

For two I would say the trends I see from this are more related to social networks and effect the flow of information rather than specific search returns.

Three is that we live now and for the foreseeable future in a system which is under near constant assault by people trying to game the system. People make a living trying to advise people on how best to game the system and thwarting them is often woven right into Googles updates like hummingbird and panda. The best one can do is try to understand the subjective definition of fair play within the system they operate in and do their level best to work as close to that line as possible.

Four is yes but it is not fully effective yet. Again the system does not have the ability to derivate multiple levels of value from a conversation, yet in the future that is where it is going. In the not too distant future. For now the effect seems limited in it's ability to affect ranking, but that will change in the future.

For five I would say all tools help, however trust and authority are developed over time, while a polished first impression may help expedite this process it can not be a substitute for it. You cannot fake the value or originiality of your words, and this is where semantic value is derived from. So I would say tools help and can improve opportunities, however it is important to remember they are only tools, what you say has to matter to begin with and it doesn't matter the font that irrelevant information uses.

For my question I would pose what exactly does the semantic internet mean, and do you really think you know for sure, or are you simply sure you don't know? Not meaning you of course, but as a general question I would put to the public. My suspicion is the vast majority of people out there have no idea what it even means…:)

Thank you Teodora Petkova – appreciate the document link.

If we could earn comments from all of the participants in this chat regularly… the sky'd be the limit David Amerland

Point taken Ammon Johns.

Thank you Bruce Marko . Am I naive to hold out hope that regular people are truly trying to work within the system?

Randy Milanovic many are, and many are not, there is always hope my friend

Well, Randy Milanovic, you only have to see the comments right here to answer your post.

1.  This question has two nebulous concepts that makes me difficult to address it squarely, but I'll try after enumerating these challenges.  The first is a reference to "semantic advantage".  I'll read that as "something that has a relative clarity of meaning that can be gleaned by data consumers," but that's in the absence of any further information.  The second fuzzy adjectival construction is "social post."  As opposed to what?  A "non-social" post?  Some sort of document that's not a "post"?  That a document has comments attached to it makes it "social" IMO.

Anyway, the most significant "semantic" advantage of a an artifact for which there's a large number of comments could be that the entity or entities under discussion could have more information provided about them (though not necessarily in a way that data consumers are able to digest that information meaningfully – i.e. "semantically").  "Could" because they could be a "large number of garbage comments" that added no value to the piece, semantic or otherwise.

Probably the biggest "advantage" in this situation is that comment count itself, which a data consumer could provisionally say "this is a post of some importance, because of the engagement it appears to have."

Finally – and this basically as a segue to my next answer – probably the biggest advantage from an optimization perspective is that a post with more comments is more likely to provide a match for more queries, by dint of the concepts or – far more likely – the strings a search engine is able to identify in those comments (thought I don't know if that's considered a "semantic" advantage or not).

2.  Yes, I see a correlation between documents ranking in the SERPs and strings contained within (obviously spiderable) comments on a document, but this is nothing new.  If anything, there's fewer of such heavily-commented posts high in the results for long tail queries because the search engines are getting progressively better at returning relevant resources that don't precisely match strings in a long-tail query, to the detriment of those social posts.

3.  Marketers try to game engagement all the time, and of course there's a cottage industry in fake engagement ("get 5,000 new followers for $5.00 … guaranteed!").  Is this done to improve search rankings?  Sometimes, though of course the search engines vehemently deny there's a direct correlation between engagement and search ranking.

4. What makes "social commenting" inherently "semantic"?  Dropping the adjectives I can respond that "the nature of commenting" is such that it can sometimes impact "search rankings in tightly contested or competitive markets" – depending on the query, the market, and the comments in question.  Other times, not at all.  In other words, there's nothing inherent to comments that give comment-laden posts the ability to outrank other types of documents.

5.  It depends on the specific tool, how that tool is employed, and which data consumer's "semantic value, trust or authority" is potentially impacted.

Within any given commenting network there's lots of trust and authority building going on, particularly when comments themselves can be voted on by readers.

There's a lot of potential here for search engines, because you've got these disambiguated personal entities that can be linked to various topical realms.

In reality, virtually all of this potential is unrealized.  I don't think the search engines make much of raw comment counts, it's difficult for them to track identities that are verified and disambiguated in somebody else's network (i.e. I think that chance that Google can tell the Aaron Bradley that wrote such-and-such an article on SEO Skeptic and the Aaron Bradley that left a comment on a Search Engine Land article is virtually nil).

But most importantly the vast majority of Disqus, IntenseDebate, and LiveFyre comments aren't indexed by the search engines.  That this is a technological implementation issue doesn't make it any less pressing.  To choose one example out of tens of thousands, articles on Salon.com get scores, sometimes hundreds of comments.  Check out the Google cache:  zero out of a zillion comments indexed. Search engine value:  zero.

6a.  I can't help it – it's a mulit-part question.  For what reasons do people likely comment on web documents when given the opportunity, and what do these motivations suggest about the uses a search engine might make of comments?  6b.  Of course!

Spectacular, aren't they Sergio Redondo

Aaron Bradley (in fact, everyone here) thank you for your thought-provioking responses.

To clarify #1: I was viewing the concept of a social post to be initially a post into a social platform (such as this one), with some revision to include blog articles.

Somehow I missed Barbara Starr in the initial share.

Editor's note: I've ended this blog post at this point, as Aaron's contribution pretty much wrapped up the first evening of chatter. Much more followed, but rather than post everything here, I thought I'd open up an opportunity for you to engage the Semantic Search leaders in this thread directly, either in the Disqus comments below, or in social media itself. In either case, I'm certain you'll join me in learning a bit more about semantic search, no matter if you're brand new to this semantic thing, or even an old pro. And, I'll be publishing the participants' 'missing' questions in the near future so watch for those.

My biggest takeaway from this discussion?

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Original source: Does Social Engagement Affect Search Results?.
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