Tennis officials a-Twitter: US Open players warned
Watch what you tweet.
That’s the message tennis authorities are delivering as the U.S. Open gets set to start Monday, telling players and their entourages to be careful about what they post on the social networking site Twitter.
Signs are being posted in the players’ lounge, locker rooms and referee’s office at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center with the header: “Important. Player Notice. Twitter Warning.”
The signs, written by the Tennis Integrity Unit, point out that Twitter messages could violate the sport’s anti-corruption rules.
“Many of you will have Twitter accounts in order for your fans to follow you and to become more engaged in you and the sport — and this is great,” the notices read. “However popular it is, it is important to warn you of some of the dangers posted by Twittering as it relates to the Tennis Anti-Corruption Program Rules.”
Andy Roddick, for one, is not a fan of the warning. In a tweet Friday night, the 2003 U.S. Open champion wrote that he thinks it’s “lame the US Open is trying to regulate our tweeting.. I understand the on-court issue but not sure they can tell us if we can’t do it on our own time … we’ll see.”
He added in another tweet: “I definitely respect the rule about inside info and on the court, but you would seriously have to be a moron to send ‘inside info’ through a tweet.”
Told of Roddick’s comments, tournament spokesman Chris Widmaier said, “We agree with Mr. Roddick that it would be ‘moronic’ to provide what might be construed as insider information. However, in the age of new media, it is imperative to ensure the absolute integrity of the game.”
Sports leagues and governing bodies are paying close attention as more and more athletes turn to Twitter to reach fans directly; some NFL teams, for example, urged players not to use it. But tennis appears to be the first sport openly concerned about Twitter’s possible effect on gambling.
The signs at the U.S. Open say tweeting is not allowed on court during matches. They also warn about using Twitter away from the court, saying sending “certain sensitive information concerning your match or other matches and/or players should be avoided. Depending on the information sent out this could be determined as the passing of ‘inside information.’”
The messages define that as “information about the likely participation or likely performance of a player in an event or concerning the weather, court conditions, status, outcome or any other aspect of an event which is known by a Covered Person and is not information in the public domain.”
The warnings say they apply to players, coaches, agents, family members and tournament staff.
“We take our anti-gambling procedures very seriously, and we’re in full agreement with this recommendation from the Tennis Integrity Unit,” Widmaier said Friday.
Twitter, launched in 2006, first gained popularity as a way for fans to follow the thoughts and activities of celebrities via messages of 140 characters or fewer.
Several prominent tennis players are part of the trend, including defending U.S. Open champion Serena Williams (who has nearly 1 million followers) and Roddick (more than 100,000).
Athletes post everything from personal blog links to updates on their social lives to injury updates. That last category is the sort of thing that worries the world of tennis, which revamped its anti-corruption policing a year ago in the wake of an investigation into match-fixing.
Jeff Rees, whose name appears at the bottom of the signs posted at the U.S. Open, was appointed in August 2008 to run the Tennis Integrity Unit. That’s also when tennis’ four governing bodies — the ATP and WTA tours, the International Tennis Federation and the Grand Slam Committee — adopted an anti-corruption code to make sure the same rules and penalties are applied across the sport.
Why Now Is Not a Good Time to Slash Your Market Research Budget
The latest surveys conducted among marketers point to a precipitous drop in spending for overall media and advertising budgets. As one example, a survey from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) indicates that 77% of US advertisers are cutting their media spending this year. For many, those cuts will lead to a commensurate drop in market research funding, since the two items are usually found together under the same umbrella marketing budget.
According to a global study conducted by AdMedia Partners, only 27% of marketers planned to increase their spending on market research this year, while an almost equal 23% said they were expecting a decrease.
With another 50% of respondents in the study planning to hold the line on spending, the net gain comes to a scant 4% of marketers.
Similarly, a Duke University Fuqua School of Business survey commissioned by the American Marketing Association (AMA) found that US marketers planned to increase their spending on “marketing research and intelligence” by only 1.8%.
That increase is actually an average among B2B and B2C marketers. While B2B marketers are expecting a modest 3.7% bump, their B2C counterparts are looking at a 2.9% cut in market research spending.
Even those specifically responsible for buying market research are looking at cuts during this troubled year.
In the “2009 Annual Survey of Market Research Professionals,” from MarketResearchCareers.com, buyers expected their research budgets to be cut by an average of 9.5%, reversing a 20-year trend of spending increases. They anticipated use of syndicated research to fall from 81% in 2008 to 75% in 2009.
So the results, in terms of budgets, are somewhat mixed. Some organizations are seeing this time as an opportunity to increase spending, while others are looking to cut.
Here are three reasons why you might want to put yourself in the “increase” (or at least “maintain”) market research camp:
- With the economy clouding the future, why throw away your flashlight when it could shine on intriguing consumer insights, hot technology trends and market opportunities?The market is bleak out there, yet there are always opportunities lurking—if you have the tools to find them. Market research can often help you uncover little gems of insight that, when acted on, can connect you more closely with your customer or reveal new markets entirely.As cited in the March 23 issue of BusinessWeek, MasterCard learned from market research that certain consumer technology adoption trends were occurring in emerging countries, and these were creating new and exciting growth opportunities for the industry—and for MasterCard in particular.
Other marketers, somewhat surprisingly, are choosing this year to aggressively boost their spending in social media marketing—because a wealth of research data from numerous sources is making a very compelling business argument for them to do so.
Besides, when you have to watch every dollar you spend on marketing, don’t you want to be fully informed as to how best to spend that dollar?
- Market research can help you preserve budgets, projects and even people.One of our clients in the pharmaceutical industry shared with me a fascinating story. When she and her team were threatened with nasty budget cuts that would decimate their spending on new media campaigns, as well as eliminate some of her core staff, she went straight to work. Using her subscription access to eMarketer, she was able to build a solid, data-supported case for upper management that ultimately convinced them to restore her budgets, including her staff.In tough times, you need all the data artillery you can get your hands on, whether you get it from us or from one of the many other solid, dependable research sources out there. Market research data and insights—when used properly—can grease the wheels of corporate acceptance for proposals, presentations, recommendations, new business pitches and even entire marketing budgets.
- Prepare for better times ahead.You are not alone if your media and marketing budgets have been hacked into unrecognizable shapes. But why not use this temporary cutback as an opportunity to invest in the future? By immersing yourself and your team in market research data, focusing on up-and-coming trends and emerging consumer insights, you will be at the ready with “go-to-market” action plans when the budget ax is finally lifted.That time may be coming sooner than you expect.
Here at eMarketer, we practice what we preach. We are actively reading, absorbing and applying data insights from our market reports, articles, interviews and videos to constantly improve the content and service we provide for our clients.
What can you do with market research today—to make sure your future is brighter?
How to Be More Productive With Your Tweets
Jennifer Van Grove, associate editor of Mashable, recently posted an article on “How to Get the Most Out of Status Updates” for microblog services like Twitter. Here are some highlights…
Some studies show that 11 percent of online adults are using status updates, but if you think about the history of the status message and its roots in instant messaging, that number actually seems pretty small.
Even though we predict big things to come from these short status updates, the reality is that the present day status update has the potential to make you more productive in and outside of Twitter (
), help you extend your reach, improve your visibility, and of course have a little fun. So, we can all look to the future for even more innovation, but we’ll show you how to do more with your status updates right now.
How to get productive with your tweets
There are a myriad of amazing ways to use your tweets for an entirely different purpose than your typical tweeting behavior. For Remember The Milk (
) you can use twitter commands to jot down mental to-dos. Plus, you can direct message @timer to create a Twitter timer or alarm, track time via Harvest, or DM @gcal to add meetings or events to your Google Calendar.
When it comes to Twitter, you can even use a status message to help you collect survey data using twtpoll, manage the guest list for your next event using twtvite, create and disseminate your gift registry with ease via twtwlst, and offer exclusive Twitter coupons via twtQpon. All of these twtapps could be big time savers, and since they tap into your Twitter network, your status has never been so flexible.
Short-form messaging on other services
There’s a whole host of other productive things you can do with your status independent of Twitter. If Facebook status is more your thing, you can kill two birds with one stone and use Xoopit (
) to view and update Facebook status messages while checking your Gmail () account. Plus, since Facebook just opened up the Facebook Status API in February, we’re likely to see more functional applications that help us use our Facebook status for a myriad of purposes.
If you’re a browser-based person, Ubiquity () for Firefox () is a short-form in-browser messaging utility for doing more than meets the eye. Ubiquity can be pretty intimidating to first time users, but once you learn a few commands you’ll be hooked.
Say, for example, you’re a Gmail user and you find a note-worthy passage you want to email to a friend, just select the text, launch Ubiquity (Alt or Ctrl + Space Bar), and type the command “email (insert optional text) to @emailaddress.com.” Ubiquity will automatically add a link to the page you were on, and open up Gmail with your pre-constructed message. All you need to do is hit send.
In addition to the built-in commands, developers are also busy making super short-form friendly custom commands that you can subscribe to to make Ubiquity even cooler. Just search the Herd for the community generated commands you want. There’s quick commands for everything from URL shorteners to commands for updating your status (and finding friends) on all the popular social media sites. You can even search Last.fm, get a weather forecast, and search Google () (g + search term), Twitter (tsearch + search term), or Wikipedia () (wiki + search term).
How to extend your reach
Depending on your social presence, you’re likely to have networks of friends and contacts across a variety of social sites. That’s where sites like Ping.fm and HelloTxt come into the picture. Whether you’re updating your status from the web, via SMS, email, or a third-party application, these services can help you spread your updates with zero effort. Of course, definitely show some restraint in this department and create special commands in Ping.fm to ensure that you’re not double posting messages on the same site.
A bonus feature for bloggers looking to leverage status updates to syndicate their new blog posts is Ping.fm’s brand new integration with Notify.me, the alerts friendly site. Now you can use Notify.me to input your feed URLs (a là Twitterfeed), add include and exclude features, and then use Ping.fm to automatically spit out, in almost real-time, your feed as a status update to selected networks. It’s pretty nifty in practice.
How to increase visibility
Part of being able to extend the network effect of your status update is having the right desktop client for broadcasting updates as well as keeping a lookout on relevant updates from other users. Though we believe the perfect desktop client is unique to each user, we highly recommend the new Seesmic Desktop for managing multiple accounts and tracking custom search results. TweetDeck (), which is now more stable, is better if updating and viewing Facebook and 12seconds status messages and videos are also priorities.
Nambu and EventBox are also getting a lot of well deserved love from the Mac community, and are worth a nice long look for managing, updating, and tracking multiple social accounts on your desktop.
Business users, or people with shared Twitter accounts, should turn to CoTweet for web-based Twitter CRM. The application is hands down the most efficient way to make your company’s multi-user Twitter status updates work for you. Since you can assign follow-up actions to users of a shared account, view a host of Twitter stats on users, create and save custom searches, and add notes to follow up on tasks and Twitter users, it’s the key to staying sane when status updates have a professional focus.
Just for fun
Sure, improving your visibility and reach, and multitasking via status update are great, but if you just want pure entertainment there’s always these 6 Twitter games to make tweeting fun. Plus, Foursquare’s location-aware mobile application has a game baked right in, so every time you check-in you gain points that earn you badges and unlock features.
How to Reach Gen Y on Social Networks
Seeking to grab the attention of Gen Y’s on social networks? Better put away the old tried-and-true online display ads. A new study by the Participatory Marketing Network and Pace University shows that, to young adults aged 18-24, online ads in traditional formats are so yesterday. 
These researchers asked a group of Gen Y’s if they notice ads at all when navigating through a social community, and if they approve of them. While 84% said they notice ads on social networks, only 19% said they find them “relevant.”Ouch.
According to Internet Retailer, the researchers also found that 74% of the young consumers polled click on social network ads “infrequently,” and 36% don’t click on the ads at all. Yikes.
So, what’s a Gen Y marketer to do in social media? Well, there were a few signs of hope in the results, too. For instance, 62% of the respondents said they have “visited a brand or fan page on a social network.” And 48% said they have “become a fan or friend of the company or organization” showcased on a brand or fan page.
The top three reasons these respondents cited for joining a brand or fan group were to: get product updates ( 67%), view promotions (64%) and view or download music videos (41%).
The Main Point: Time to engage GenY in social communities, try hosting a brand page with updated product announcements, fun promotions and music added to the whole mix.
10 Ways to Boost the Value of Your Blog
Branding Strategies: 10 Ways to Boost the Value of Your Blog
Chris Baggot,CEO and Co-Founder of Compendium Blogware, recently wrote a post for iMedia Connection that I found very valuable on 10 ways to boost the value of your corporate blog. Here are some great points from Chris.
This past year was a tough one for corporate blogging, especially considering the bashing business bloggers took from two separate Forrester reports. The primary problem with blogging in 2008 originated from a focus on the wrong objectives. The result was pretty much a big disappointment from both the readers of corporate blogs and the companies that supported them, which began asking the question, “Why?”
However, all is not lost. Many companies did in fact find the successful formula for both high ROI and reader satisfaction. As we move deeper into 2009, these trends will accelerate and the maturity of corporate blogging will become both scalable and sustainable, while actually contributing to the bottom line.
The following are my predictions for the top trends in corporate blogging this year.
Trend 1: A focus on what’s important
The healthy thing about a bad economy is it forces us to get focused on the activity and investments that actually drive our businesses. The days of tweets or Facebook occupying our brains are long gone. In online marketing, we have to focus on high-return activities. Vince Lombardi said that football was about two things: blocking and tackling. Likewise, online marketing is about two things: email and search. Since more than 90 percent of the internet population engages in a search every day, businesses should focus on this instead of how to measure ROI on blogging.
Trend 2: Blogging for search
Organic search is driven primarily by the formula (D + C) x V = OST. That means data plus content multiplied by volume equals organic search traffic. In the case of online marketing, the data are your targeted keywords. Content is based on target to those keywords. The magic enumerator is volume. The more web content you create specifically around your targeted keywords, the more organic search traffic you will drive.
This is where businesses really start to appreciate the power of corporate blogging. We must forget about RSS feeds or comments as the measure of success and realize that blogging is a target marketing strategy based on delivering a message to a keyword, just like email delivers a relevant message to an email address.
When you consider the three main traffic sources to corporate blogs (direct navigation, referrals, and search), search is the only measure you should focus on because it’s the only one you can control and, more importantly, scale. You can’t increase the number of referrals or direct navigation; it either happens or it doesn’t. But on the other hand, when discussing search, if you want more organic traffic, you simply have to add more blogs targeted specifically to your keywords and write more content.
Trend 3: Rethink everything you hear about social networking
As marketers, we are often attracted to things that are new and shiny. In a market like the one we are experiencing, coupled with the decline in just about every other marketing medium (newspapers and other print, TV, radio, banner ads, mobile, online video), it’s fun to imagine that if you “only join the community” all your marketing problems will be solved. (That last sentence sounded a little angry didn’t it?).
During my presentation on this topic, I often reference a graphic from Jack Herer’s book, “The Emperor Wears No Clothes.” I’m not saying you shouldn’t participate — you should absolutely be listening to what is going on regarding your company and industry. But relative to the things that actually scale and really drive revenue, this is a sideshow compared to the big event.
I heard a talk the other day in which a marketing person from a big brand-name outdoor retailer was discussing a major initiative for the company’s marketing department this year. Building a social network. Great. “How many members would you consider a success?” “Oh anywhere from 10,000 to 50,000 would be huge.” Doing the math, to make $50 million from this endeavor would require achieving 100 percent of the membership goal and having each of those members influence at least $1,000 each in increased sales. I wonder how many businesses do this math.
Trend 4: Content and volume
We talked about this a little bit earlier, but it’s worth addressing as a separate trend. The simple math shows that the more content you create, the more organic traffic you will attract.
Trend 5: Keyword awareness
Blogging for search acquisition is a data-driven strategy. What’s great is that the data are easily available with very solid metrics and value. The data are your keywords. People are telling you exactly what they are attempting to find. Every industry has hundreds, if not millions, of people getting online and entering keywords specifically asking for your product or service. These keywords are easy to find, simple to track by volume, and easy to value. What’s great about the pay-per-click world is there is a fair marketplace, just like the stock market, where people bid and compete for keywords every day. There is no ambiguity about any of this; it’s a database marketer’s dream.
Keywords imply buyer intent. Whether I’m looking for a bankruptcy lawyer or a toaster, when you see me searching with those terms, you can be pretty certain that I’m a worthwhile prospect (compared to if I happened to be watching 30 Rock or something). Search is a target marketing strategy. The marketer’s job is to deliver a message to the hundreds or thousands of keywords ready to serve that message when someone makes the search.
Trend 6: Dumb it down
The polite way to say this is “write for the web.” To date, blogging has been about thought leadership and CEOs’ grand visions. This has been a hindrance to SEO. When you over-think your content, you create a lot less of it. It becomes a lot of work.
Seth Godin gave me this advice when I first started blogging: “Be pithy.” Words of wisdom. People don’t read the web, they scan. They are looking for themes, credibility, or an idea. Think about your content in terms of search. When people have a problem, they enter their keywords into that little box looking for help. Are you the one to help them? First you have to show up. We already talked about how that requires targeting and volume. Are they looking for journalism? Most likely they are looking for a quick source for an answer. By writing simply, enthusiastically, or talking about specific problems and solutions, you stand a much better chance of not only winning the search, but also winning the conversion.
One of my co-workers wrote in her blog that we should blog like a 5-year-old. If we did we would:
- Be honest
- Be humorous
- Be humble
- Keep it basic
- Talk at a level that everyone can understand
- Never run out of things to say
This is great advice for every corporate blogger.
Trend 7: Widespread employee blogging
A big part of the problem with corporate blogging has been that it’s been too corporate. People don’t necessarily care or, more importantly, trust what the CEO, PR team, or brand says. The good news is that your employees are in a position to tell the kind of stories that foster both trust and engagement. Last year, Richard Edelman said, “Employee bloggers are five times more credible than a CEO blogger.”
People don’t care nearly as much about your opinions as they care about their problem. Employees are in a much better position to discuss things the customer cares about. Things like applications, use cases, customers, and the problems they solve every day. Employees are human, engaged, passionate, and want to participate and feel valued. If you give someone a business card and let them talk on the phone, you should let them blog.
Additionally, the huge benefit of widespread employee participation is the content volume. By sharing the load among everyone, you naturally generate an increased volume of content that is timely, relevant, and will drive more traffic.
If the social media phenomenon is telling us anything, it’s that people like people. You hire smart people, they enjoy their jobs and customer interaction — so let them write.
Trend 8: Get local
Blogging for search is a great strategy for anyone, but it’s rocket fuel for local search. The simple reason is that there is less competition. Most local searches are won by directories like online yellow pages because nobody is competing for them at that level.
The reality from a search standpoint is that an estimated 20-50 percent of all search has “local intent.” Local search grew 76 percent last year, according to comScore. This gives a huge advantage to those local and national companies that focus on a local strategy. Do people really want to search, find a directory, and then have to search again? Of course not, they just want to find you. Blog about your location and blog about your products and inventory. And don’t forget your keywords.
Trend 9: Coupons and other offers
Think about your traffic now. What do you want the people to do? Read your wisdom? Maybe, but that is hard to monetize. Think about transactional calls to action (CTAs). These keyword-targeted blogs have the same responsibility as any other web property. They have to convert that traffic into action. Whatever you expect from your site, you should challenge the blogs to perform the same or better in conversion.
Trend 10: Measurement and metrics
Are my blogs doing me any good? The only way to find out is to measure them. Blogs, like any other web marketing initiative, have a huge advantage in that they are all measurable. The key is what to measure.
A great measure at the top of the funnel is the relationship of blog post volume to overall traffic volume. As you see the correlation between the traffic increase as you increase your content, it absolutely supports engaging more bloggers.
You should also measure your keyword traffic against the value of that traffic if you were paying for it. We discussed earlier that there is no ambiguity when it comes to the value of search traffic. Google and others quite clearly indicate a marketplace for keywords that is designed to squeeze out the real value of every keyword you can imagine. When you are looking at your organic traffic, you need to measure what that traffic would cost if you had to buy it.
By measuring the value of keywords, your organization can focus on converting that traffic into actionable business. Tell your boss you drove $20,000 worth of organic traffic last month, and I promise the first question out of his or her mouth will be, “How much business did that translate into?”
And, at the end, that’s the most important measure, right? You increase the top of the funnel so you can increase what comes out the other end.
This year’s corporate blogging trends will be all about what’s coming out the other end — the ROI of blogging.
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