And now to a very sensitive issue – monitoring. As some of you know my profession is leading brands into the future of communication. One of the more important parts of this is teaching them how to keep track of their own brands in the jungle of conversation. What are people saying about my brand, where does the conversation take place and how can we respond to it – simple questions really.

However, quite many brands don’t have a clue on how to do this or even worse – they haven’t even started to think about tracking conversations related to their brands.

When I speak about this we often end up talking about me and how I track my own brand. I try to keep track of every conversation out there that in one way or another has my name or brand in it. As often as I can I also listen to, respond or in other ways take the conversation into account – just as any brand should.

One of my Netvibes dashboards that I use to monitor Ronnestam online

Since sharing is caring – here is how to track keywords online on a daily basis without paying for it. NOTE – this doesn’t give you a 100% guarantee and the more generic your brand is the harder it is to monitor it, then professional help might be your solution. It also applies better to smaller brands rather than large ones. But you will gain some control over what happens online in most open forums and it’s a start!

Follow these 21 steps to take gain some sort of control of where your brand might be mentioned online

1. First thing. Head over to Google Alerts and enter the keywords you want to monitor. This is the easy one.
2. Then do the same over at Socialmention Alerts. An easy one too. However, these first two ones are a little bit slow so continue reading.
3. Register an account on Netvibes.com and once your done keep that Internet browser window open.
4. Open one more window (press CTRL+N or CMD+N on a Mac)
5. In the new window, go to socialmention.com and perform a search on the keywords (for example the name of your brand) you want to track.
6. Once you have gotten your result. Look for the orange RSS icon in the top right corner.
   Click the RSS Feed icon.
7. Now select the link in your web browser and copy (press CTRL+C or CMD+C on a mac).
8. Switch back to the window where you have your new Netvibes.com page.
9. In the top, press new Tab and name it with the keyword you searched for.
10. In the top left, click the green button ‘Ad Content’ and choose Ad a Feed in the drop down menu.
11. Place your marker in the field that says ‘Enter a feed address or website URL for auto detection’ and paste (CTRL+V or CMD+V on a mac).
12. Press the button Add Feed besides your pasted link.
13. Now press the little green button that says ‘add’ and you search result will be displayed in the bottom field below the Tab that you just named.
14. Switch windows and perform the same search in Socialmention but this time click the tab Microblogs above the search field
15. Redo the entire process and you have added your next search.
16. Once you are done you should have searches in each and every area from the web.
17. Now Switch window back to the one with Social Mention and go to Icerocket.com
18. On Icerocket you will find the RSS results to the left.
19. Now perform the same process except for creating new tabs in Netvibes.
20. Once done, go to Twingly.com and perform the same searches on both Blogs and Microblogs.
21. Last thing to do. Go to the preferences of your internet browser and change your startpage to netvibes.com

Now you will at least know if there’s any shit written about your brand and you have the possibility to act.

And of course I do know that some of you might think this sounds scary but this is the world we live in and you should act in accordance.

We’re fed up with boring old school advertising. We don’t want your information and rational explanations. We wanna dance, laugh, feel and love. We do not want be treated like idiots!

James Dean knew how to seduce people while looking pretty darn boring. But face it. He’s dead and would be pretty out of date now!

Information is all over us. We’re accessing it everywhere faster than ever. The more shit we get our hands on the less we wanna mess with, so you’ve gotta stand out.

Future brands don’t buy media they create brand dramas that build value and generate SEO equity – only then will you reach your future friends (aka. target group). Future brands tell stories.Future brands rely on drama and constant innovation – totally integrated.

Here are eleven bullets of love that you can load that brand gun of yours with: (or a crash course in modern branding)

1. Social currency

As social networks spread all over the world the opportunity to spread your brand globally is bigger than ever. What you’ve gotta do is get your head around your own brand values and think hard…think harder than ever before…what – can – you – give – to – me – that – builds – ME – among my peers. Yes. You heard right. You’ve gotta turn your mind around. It’s not about you winning. It’s not about you getting things. Give and you shall recieve. After all, we’re only humans deriving straight from a slimy fish or something. We only wanna fit in. And your brand can help us do that.

2. Creative excellence

People around the world are savvy. We’re accessing information from all around the world on the fly. We’re evaluating it on the fly. There’s no room for flaws. Get your business right when it comes to design, ideas and creativity. Only then will we support you! If you need some advice – talk to Mr Steve Jobs.

3. Value

You might trick us into falling in love with you. But in order for us to stay married you’ve gotta give us value for our money. A well known brand had a problem with too many calls to their call center. People complained about their products. This had led to a meeting where the management team were discussing how to develop the call center so that they could serve more people. A friend of mine were in the room and said “Why don’t you make your products better instead” – bang on target. Tomorrow there’s no room for errors. You’ll end up in price comparison engines, your page rank will drop or at least be associated with the wrong things, you’ll have protest groups on Facebook etc. Provide us with a true value and we’ll stay in love.

4. Open source

If you’re looking to race against the best you’ve gotta drop your pit stop times. With this blurry talk I mean – don’t get stuck in a big ass back-end system that won’t let you change things fast and cheap. Go open source as soon as possible. Drop everything else and run for it!

5. Know your target audience better than you know your mother in law

We’re not runners anymore. We’re not car lovers any more. We’re not mac fans any more. We’re not Nike lovers. We’re not adidas lovers. We’re everything! We want to be the best in everything we do. We don’t settle for less.

6. Join the conversation

Your brand is out there – everywhere. And you’ve gotta do your best to be part of it. Did you hear that – be part of your own brand. I mean it.

The blue dot is your brand!

Your brand is no longer built primarily on what you tell people about it. It’s built upon what other people say about it. Given that’s a truth I think it’s time for you to step into the crowd and start listening.
Note – start listening!

7. Linkonomy

Page rank – the one formula you should learn in school

This one is simple. As long as Google rules the empire – make sure people link to your site, your content and your domain. There’s no other way you’ll be seen. Ah…you probably have to link to them too

[updated]

@deeped commented that page rank is not all that simple to explain to companies. That’s not really my intention. But it’s a great point though. The guys over at SEOmoz, the best site on SEO, posts a great piece called Search Engine Ranking every two years. The survey includes the Top 5 Ranking Factors, the Top 5 Negative Ranking Factors, the Top 5 Most Contentious Factors and the Overall Ranking Algorithm. It’s a must read.

This year the Top 5 Ranking Factors were:

1. Keyword Focused Anchor Text from External Links

   73% very high importance

2. External Link Popularity (quantity/quality of external links)

   71% very high importance

3. Diversity of Link Sources (links from many unique root domains)

   67% very high importance

4. Keyword Use Anywhere in the Title Tag

   66% very high importance

5. Trustworthiness of the Domain Based on Link Distance from Trusted Domains (e.g. TrustRank, Domain mozTrust, etc.)

   66% very high importance

Head over to SEOmoz to read the full survey.

[end of update]

8. Usability

Curiosity used to make us ask for directions but not anymore. No matter if we’re talking online usability or how to direct people in a subway – lead us to the good shit now! Loading times no! Confusion no! Simplicity yes! Hospitality yes!

9. Kick Lucifer out of the basement and trade your media money for content

If you lead a large brand you probably have one budget in your safe. Then a couple of hundred meters down in hell you’ve got a big bag of media budgets waiting to be blown up. Ever thought about what that money can do for your brand online if you build things by the book (seo book that is)? Cut your media money by half and move that half over to the equity side of your marketing mix – online content. Built right, written right and distributed over the right social networks it will do ten times more for your brand than any 30 second commercial will ever do.

10. Make us laugh

Is there anything better than a refreshing laughter? It’s a trip. It’s a drug. It makes us fall in love. Never ever forget that. If you’re a CEO or a Marketing Director representing a brand that creates boring, no good, sleep ‘pilling’, price fighting commercials. Report yourselves to the next mission to Mars – cause we don’t want you on our beautiful planet!

11. Finally drop the following word from your vocabulary:

Control. You don’t need it and you can’t have it.

See you out there!

Yesterday I was sent an email from The Economist through their social communication agency We Are Social. The mail presented their latest campaign – Thinking Spaces. A campaign presenting a number of opinion leaders and their ‘Thinking Spaces’. One part of the campaign contains a social component where they’re asking bloggers to contribute with our own stories alongside those of the leading personalities already featured like movie director Claudia Llosa, musician Jamie Lidell and Spotify founder Daniel Ek among others.

The campaign piss me off cause they’re asking me to contribute with quite a lot of content and traffic generation without really giving anything back. On top of that it’s clear that Spotify is featured for more than one reason as there’s obviously a hidden marketing component where I’m asked for my favorite Spotify playlist. (I would know since I’m running a Spotify playlist site on the side)

Dear Economist, let me tell you a little bit about me and MY thinking space.

This is MY thinking space.
If you would have respected my thinking space you would have started this campaign entirely different. I don’t get why you have created a flash site when you could have integrated the entire campaign on a blog platform. You could then have written a series of posts explaining your campaign to people and in that post also publicly linked to the blogs you asked to participate. This way you would have given us credit before you actually ask us to give you credit. Now the actual campaign leaves out social contributors.

The questions then?
I don’t want to answer a set of question about my personality that fit’s your campaign mold. On top of that I don’t get what Spotify has to do with it? (of course I do since one of your ‘leaders’ is the Spotify founder Daniel Ek). Why didn’t you ask participant to crowdsource your questions for you? Or give us one single question. One single question would have challenged my creativity. Now you’re more or less asking for my resume and an entire novel.

When you do social campaigns – give something back before you ask for support!
If a campaign like this would come from a brand like Kiva, Unicef, The Red Cross, Amnesty or another aid organization I’d love to participate without getting anything back. But a commercial brand like yours, The Economist, has to do better. On the campaign blog I read: “The Economist might feature your own Thinking Space on the site, along with those of the original featured personalities.” That’s not enough for me! If you succeed with this link-bating campaign I’ll end up in a long list of blogs that I don’t know if I want to be associated with.

Why didn’t you think social for real?
I don’t see why you didn’t choose 50 bloggers from around europe and built the entire campaign around us instead? I bet the budget you paid for this campaign and that flash site would have covered it. You also have access to something we don’t – a paper. If you would asked us bloggers for a unique story and in return done a piece on our blogs in your paper rather than on a campaign site you would have gotten fantastic content, trust me! And if you don’t then why bother asking for my participation in your campaign.

All in all. It’s good that you’re trying to go social with your campaigns – but don’t act like the dinosaur brand you are – think smaller, think friendly, think like you’re one of us and think social.

Finally.

I get that I’ve contributed to the SEO & link-bating part of your campaign. That is of course if people don’t decide to link to this post with the title The Economist Thinking Space campaign then I’ll be the winner.

Now I need to get back to spending my summer in the best possible way.

Best regards from the Swedish archipelago.
Johan Ronnestam

ps. Some blogs obviously got hooked. So far these blogs have joined the campaign:

Bibliobibuli, Chewytha scratchynutz: Tribeca, Code is poetry, The Curious Brain, Creative Bits, Creativity Online, Eskimon, Geoffrey Dorne, Lasse’s Findings, Marty’s Musings, Moleskinerie, Neoplayground, Nicola Davies, Notcot.org, Not For Paper, QBN, RA Forum, RiotInc, Rubbishcorp, Shawn Blanc, Theendofdecember, This May Be It, Unseen Said, Viva La Network, We Are Pop Slags, Wink at creativity

Yesterday I attended my first Likeminded networking meeting at Scandic Anglais. I’m very glad that I took the time to drop in since there’s so many talented, smart and nice people you end up getting to know. However as I was sitting there I felt there is room for more networking – networking among blogging peers. And inspired by how Daytona with the YABA awards have managed to create interest for all these kind of blogs I thought I’d launch another initiative to bring focus to us marketing bloggers.

Announcing Bloggers Monday – a network for at people who blog about communication, advertising and new media.

The first meeting is 2:nd of February, 8AM, Scandic Hotel, Anglais. Join us on our Facebook group before then. 

It’s all in the name
The members of Bloggers Monday will meet in Stockholm, Sweden the first monday every month. Every meeting is at 8AM at Scandic Anglais. The idea is to network, share knowledge and perhaps write a blog post or two while chatting away.

We aim to grow
The idea with Bloggers Monday doesn’t stop in Sweden. Hopefully as time goes by and people outside Sweden learns about this idea new networks are started. Just contact us and we’ll get you up and running!

Who can join?
As long as you have a blog about  communication, advertising or new media you’re welcome to join Bloggers Monday. Hook up with us in our Facebook group or on our website. Once you’re a member of the Facebook group we’ll get your blog url up on the Bloggers Monday website.

Find more information the Bloggers Monday website.