Technorati Blog

Why Paid Media is Required for Successful Social Media Marketing

From Jalichandra.com:

Here's a video stream of a panel I participated on at the OMMA Social conference. The panel was titled "Using Paid Media to Drive Earned Media", and has some essential advice for brands trying to use social media in their marketing mix. The bottom line message: nothing beats the viral engagement of social media for influencing consumers, but by itself, doesn't scale big enough or timely enough without support of paid media.

'Potential Reach' Is More Than Potentially Misleading

Tod Sacerdoti for MediaPost

I was recently on a panel discussing online video advertising, and a fellow panelist proclaimed "reach is not a problem for us, as we reach 115 million people according to comScore."  This statement is factually incorrect. 

To accurately reflect his company's reach, the panelist should have said, "We can potentially reach 115 million people." According to comScore's methodology, in order reach those 115 million people, the network would have to buy every ad impression on every publisher they work with. Furthermore, only those publishers with more than 2% reach are verified to have an actual business relationship with the network.

As with most misleading metrics, potential reach was likely created to help sell something. comScore wanted to sell large annual subscriptions to video ad networks and video ad networks wanted a big reach number to sell advertising and compete effectively against the large display ad networks. The metric has fundamentally served its purpose - all video networks are paying customers.

Nearly every video publisher, network, blogger and journalist I talk to believes this metric is misleading. But, even more than the confusion it causes, I believe the potential reach metric is hurting all players.

Read the full article here

Engage or Die: the Impact of Social Media on Business

Years ago, when bloggers were first earning worldwide attention and influence, Technorati was among of the first major efforts to organize the millions of blogs and related conversations into a useful directory. Over time, Technorati became the hub that connected bloggers with wider audiences and eventually advertisers.

But blogs were just one part of the social media revolution. Social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and the like, expanded the ability for anyone to publish, share, and discover information. Along the way, social media became a focal point for businesses, and any organization or cause really, as social media champions realized that the ability to connect directly with people could have positive and even profound effects.

And that’s where things went completely haywire almost overnight.

Read the full article here.

Fight for Your Right to Write (on Technorati)

Symbiotic, synergistic, and one hand washes the other: write for Technorati - you win, we win. The more you write, the bigger the benefits. Find your niche and sign up for a recurring feature. And don't forget to join our writers community for access to story ideas, press releases, promotional ideas, and moral support. Here's more information about becoming a writer for Technorati or Blogcritics.

Here's more about what we're looking for:

Blogging

The Blogging channel is the home of our social media coverage. We typically are looking for pieces that talk to best practices in social media strategy, news on new services and tools, measurement, audience engagement, blog reviews and trends in the blogosphere, e.g. top Twitter trends of the week.

Business

The Business channel covers a wide variety of business issues, including Advertising, Finance, Small Business and Guru (a sub-channel that is meant for those who have specific expertise in related business issues, e.g. real-estate, entrepreneurship, etc.). Like other channels, we are looking for news driven content as well as opinionated pieces that hit o n topical, controversial and trending business issues.

Entertainment

Entertainment news is the secret vice of millions and millions of Internet surfers around the globe — and you can get reach those millions via Technorati's Entertainment channel. We are seeking celebrity sleuths, gossip hounds, TV-oholics, musicphiles and gaming experts. Whether your interest is following the latest celebrity train-wreck or writing recaps of your favorite sitcom, there's a place here for your witticisms, critiques and snark.

Lifestyle

The Lifestyle channel is Technorati's catch-all section where random news has a home. However, the channel has a few sub-channels, including Green, Travel, Autos, Motorcyles and Family. We currently have dedicated writers to Green and Travel and are looking for someone to take ownership of Motocyles as well as cover Family-related issues. All items should be news driven or focus on a specific opinion on a related news item.

Politics

The Politics channel looks to cover everything that's happening in Washington, to issues bubbling at the regional and local level, as well as share hot political news from around the world. Whether the issue is global in scale or a ballot question that will impact a single state, the Political Channel will have it covered. We are looking for hard news stories, exclusives, trend features, interviews with political figures, etc. -- anything that will send waves throughout the political blogosphere.

Sports

Technorati Sports home for any and all lovers and writers of sports. We run the gamut, from mainstream sports (NHL, NBA, MLB and NFL) to the smaller niches like tennis and even marathon running. If you're looking for an opportunity to promote yourself, improve your writing, and maybe even brand your own sports niche with a feature, Technorati Sports is just right for you.

Videos

The Videos channel is home to Technorati's coverage of the web's best videos. Viral videos, sketch comedy, movie trailers, are music videos are all fair game here. Maybe you'll help launch the next viral sensation! We also welcome news and analysis relating to trends and technology in the vast world of online video.

Interview: Offering Brand Advertisers Scale With Ad Networks

This interview with Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra appears on today's AdExchanger.com

AdExchanger.com: Can you take us through some of the pivots that Technorati has gone through and where it is today?

RJ: Our evolution from a single site into a network serving billions of ads on thousands of sites each month has certainly been interesting and exciting.  The company was originally founded and centered on www.Technorati.com, the first real-time blog search engine.  In the company’s first few years, the site developed a strong relationship with social media content creators, and we constantly heard about their challenges in getting brand advertising on their sites – in spite of the fact that the Internet’s audience was spending more time in social media than mainstream media!  So, about a year and a half ago, we launched Technorati Media, our social media ad network.

Please discuss the scale of the business today and how you support it.

Since we launched Technorati Media, the ad network has grown steadily in the number of publishers and the ads we serve on their sites.  To give a sense of scale, in April, over 200 million unique visitors worldwide saw Technorati Media’s ads. How do we support it all?  Rubber bands and paper clips!  No seriously, a variety of proprietary and 3rd party technology, and of course, some very dedicated people.

What's your sales strategy when it comes to display?

We enable social media at scale for brands.  If you think about a brand trying to buy social media at scale, you really only have two alternatives at scale (Facebook and Myspace).  So we combine hundreds of brand-safe blogs and niche social networks into a network that’s really easy and totally safe for brands to buy.  Then, in addition to standard display ad units, we offer a proprietary set of conversational media ad products that we call “Cmads”, mix in a little audience targeting, and then, magic – a combination of site-specific and audience-centric conversational media.

What's your view on the yield optimization space popularized by companies like AdMeld, PubMatic and The Rubicon Project?

I’m generally a fan of their business models, largely because the demand side has gotten way too much attention in the past year and a half, and it’s time for the supply side answer now.  The “optimizers” are leading the charge to bring balance to the marketplace, with publishers and networks also doing a variety of supply-side, value creating tactics themselves.  Hopefully we’ll see a healthy balance between supply and demand. That would be best for the whole industry.

Regarding demand-side platforms from your publisher perspective, do you feel you're "outgunned" by the demand-side?

I understand the threat, but the answer is ‘not really’.  Again, we offer a unique set of custom conversational ad products – our Cmads – in a brand-safe social media environs.  That would be hard to do entirely through a DSP.  Further, I’d even posit that some our internal ad operations emulate some DSP functions too, so while there are some threats, there are certainly opportunities as well.

Can you share broad strokes about what you're thinking in regards to data and Technorati's data strategy?

Like many in the space, I see us integrating our own data with third party data to create differentiated segments.

Is real-time bidding a friend or foe for publishers? Do you think it improves CPMs for non-guaranteed inventory?

I think RTB has both positives and negatives for publishers.  It can absolutely help CPMs if a publisher’s inventory performs well – everyone wants it.  On the flip side, the sheer glut of inventory across the web has placed downward pressure on CPMs.  Given what happened on Wall Street last week, one thing that’s crossed my mind is that instantaneous, real-time transactions don’t always help markets.  That’s something to ponder in our parallel universe.

What's your biggest challenge in guiding Technorati today?

Our current challenge is just getting our story out there.  Technorati Media is only a year and half old.  We have a differentiated offering from many networks which results in a very high close rate with planners and buyers. So like any start-up, we just need to tell more people about what we do.

Will you let Facebook "like" Technorati, and is there any concern on your part that your data is being collected by Facebook for its own data and advertising strategies with its "like" buttons?

We’re still evaluating the impact of “Like”.  There are some obvious opportunities across our network, as well as a few downsides.  But we’re still evaluating them.

A year from now, what milestones would you like Technorati to have accomplished that it hasn't already?

We have too many to list!  That said, I’ll co-opt the cliché from Bull Durham and say, we just gotta take it one campaign at a time – keep innovating, keep executing and keep building a large scale media business.

Follow Richard Jalichandra (@jalichandra), Technorati (@technorati) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

Technorati Writers, Here’s How to Get the Most Out of Your Technorati Experience

Matt Sussman, Technorati Executive Editor

We've got some great ideas for you wherein you can become an expert in your field of expertise. There lies within the chambers of our mysterious website an untapped potential that many of you can and should harness. If any of you have ever said to yourself, "My topic of interest must not be wanted because there is no channel/category/place for it," well, you have the power to CREATE that community within Technorati.

I am, of course, talking about feature columns, for example:

"The Ballot," which pertains to the 2010 elections

"The 12th Man," the definitive basketball feature

"From The School House," which covers education in the news 

"Essential Android Apps," Android app reviews

In case you didn't know how to get a feature started, let's go over the three steps:

Step 1: Decide what your feature will cover.

Be very specific. Few will be very interested in a topic consisting of "my unique thoughts on the world around me," but if you were to focus on a series of, say, thoughts on reality TV or mobile technology, suddenly you've defined your territory. And don't try to bite off too much.

Say you want to write about "the media." Well, that's actually a very good idea, because bloggers have unwittingly become the watchdog of the fourth estate. But there is so much media out there, and you are but one mortal human! Try sizing it down to "political media" or "gaming media" or "celebrity/gossip media." Now it's a lot easier to digest.

Step 2: E-mail any editor with the following information:

1. The name of the feature

2. 100-word pitch/intro/mission statement. Speak in the present tense. What does this feature cover? Why are you particularly interested in this topic?

Step 3: Write under the feature with regularity.

The best way to build a community is to write as frequently as possible. Strive to write four or five days a week if you can - but volume should only be as much as you you can handle on a regular basis.

There are also collaborative features. The 12th Man, The Ballot, Social Goodness, and PerpPlexity are such examples; you really needn't do nothing more than write under these features and be proud of it. (If you don't have this listed under your "feature" pulldown, notify an editor and we will add you to it. Some of these features have specific criteria by which one must adhere.)

This may all be old information to you. But for those wishing to embark on their own feature -- or who have one and are still trying to get the most out of it -- here are some ways you can take it to the next level. They're all technically optional suggestions, but I would quite honestly recommend buying into as many as possible:

Suggestion 1: Network with other bloggers/writers of the same topic.

Say you're writing a feature about bicycling. Seek out other people on the Internet who are writing/blogging about bicycling. Add them as friends on Facebook, Twitter, Google, Flickr, Digg, StumbleUpon, or any other social media sites that you both frequent. And be sure to communicate with them. If you like what they write, include links to some of their bicycling posts in your articles. Better yet, interview them for a story. Like any other social setting, be vocal but don't come on too strong. E-mail them all and get a roundtable going for an upcoming article. (Ex: how many miles a day should one bike?)

Suggestion 2: Be original.

This is just a no-brainer when it comes to writing. Why summarize a Microsoft press release when this has probably been done quite several times already? Link to it instead. Don't waste your time reinventing the wheel; instead, write something new and unique that doesn't seem to be out there.

Suggestion 3: Promote your work.

Twitter. Facebook. Digg. StumbleUpon. Yahoo Buzz. Use some of these, all of these, or different ones altogether. It's anyone's cup of tea, but the secret to any promotion is to make it organic. Don't tweet if you don't use Twitter. Don't submit to Reddit if you don't know what you're doing. If you read Fark or Slashdot, and know the key to submitting articles there, then do it, because those aggregators have gatekeepers which control front page access, so they are priceless if done properly. There are dozens of how-tos for online news aggregator success available online.

Consider using Twitterfeed or dlvr.it to automatically tweet articles once they are published, since you may be "afk" when an editor gets to it. Facebook lets you syndicate some or all of your Twitter posts. Perhaps create a separate Twitter account or your own Facebook fan page. And finally: e-mail! Yes, e-mail is still a very useful tool. Consider e-mailing writers' or blogs' "tip lines." Compose the e-mail personally to them. And don't spam these people with everything you write. Do this in moderation, and don't take it personally they choose not to link back to you. But also don't be bashful: if you like something you've done, make it known.

Suggestion 4: Maintain sub-features.

The best example of this is Nicolas Lewis, whose series of posts called "Hope For the Future" rests within his larger hockey feature. It highlights the worst teams in the league and how they can get better. Note how each first paragraph is italicized boilerplate which explains what the sub-feature is about. The name of the sub-feature is in the headline, and you could even go as far as to tag the posts the same way.

Suggestion 5: Tag team.

Hey, speaking of teams... For one person to try and cover everything about one topic can be a lot to do for an individual with many other priorities in life. Are two of you writing about Dancing With The Stars? Is there some reason you can't share the work? Alternate the work; each week one person can do the recap/review, and the other can go in-depth on different Dancing With The Stars topic. If there aren't two of you writing about the same topic, perhaps invite other bloggers or friends who haven't signed up to write that can join you in your venture.

Suggestion 6: Localize stories.

Some of you may know what "localization" is in the newspaper industry. It's taking a national/global story and discussing how it will affect one's community. The Minot, North Dakota paper probably had a story about how will the health care bill affect Minot, North Dakota.

Now consider Technorati features to be pseudo-communities of their own. Suddenly there are more story ideas to be had. For example: the iPad. There were scads of stories about how this would affect not just the tech sector, but also that of education, reading, gaming, sports, cooking (it's like a virtual cookbook!), travel, TV ... there are just so many angles on this, and they weren't all done on tech blogs.

Suggestion 7: Have fun and be awesome.

You already know how to do this.

I'd love to see more people give these a shot and succeed with them. Writing ad hoc on a variety of topics can be time consuming and a little frustrating because it's hard for a high volume of readers to find only the articles which they'd like. "If you build it..." It can be a little daunting to shine on a website where hundreds of writers commune and OVER ONE MILLION users have an account, but this is the best method to carve out your own little community and shine not just on Technorati, but really make a name for yourself on the Internet. Sign up for a feature today. If you have any ideas for features, please share them in the hopes that other writers may want to help you with that.

We're Launching AdSense for Technorati and Blogcritics Writers

Technorati and Blogcritics writers: we’ve launched a new feature that allows you to profit from your success: AdSense revenue from your articles that goes directly to you!

 

(New writers can sign up here to become a Blogcritic or write for Technorati.)

 

We’re starting with a six month trial. To get started, simply update your writer profile with your AdSense account. You’ll receive a dedicated AdSense ad on each of your articles. The revenue generated from those ads goes straight to you. The more you write and promote your articles, the more you earn.

 

If you don’t have one, you’ll need to get an AdSense account. For an AdSense overview, you can take this tour. The AdSense sign-up is here. There will be a spot on your author profile page to add in your AdSense account number (see below). Then add Blogcritics and Technorati to your "Allowed Sites" list on your AdSense account.

 

If you love to write and want to expand your audience and improve your craft, Blogcritics and Technorati can offer you exposure, coaching, and community, as well as access to review material, interviews, press releases and story ideas.

We're proud to count some of the web's best amateur and professional writers among our global membership of more than 3000 writers. Whatever your interests, your writing will find a home at one (or both!) of our sites. Our active community of writers and our open comments policy provide you the opportunity to engage in dialog on a diversity of topics with readers and writers from around the globe.

We're Partnering with PitchEngine on a Blogger Relations Platform

We've partnered with PitchEngine, a social PR platform, to create Technorati List, the blogger outreach component of the Pitch^TM platform. It's designed to help organizations (and bloggers themselves) simplify and expand blogger outreach.

We're very excited to partner with PitchEngine. We work closely with many of our clients on blogger outreach to complement their campaigns and our partnership with PitchEngine enables us to do this on a much larger scale.

For the first time, brands and organizations will have access to substantial direct distribution to bloggers - in the least intrusive way possible. Bloggers can gain more access to exclusive content and the ability to find and filter only the content that matters to them. Bloggers can also use the tool to conduct outreach of their own.

If you're interested in being part of the beta, you can sign up here.

In the coming weeks, you'll see us roll this out on a much larger scale as well as integrate this tool into Technorati.com. More information can be found here.

Great solution for website thumbnails / previews

Since you asked…

Some of you have noticed that we help show off your blogs using website thumbnails and have wanted to know how to do this on your own blogs. When we relaunched Technorati.com, we implemented ShrinkTheWeb to automate the capture of website previews, which saved us quite a bit of development time. By integrating with ShrinkTheWeb's API, all we need to do is copy and paste the code to get the system up and running within hours and, since we cache all of their images locally, we are able to deliver them faster.

We’ve been very happy with the service so far. If you are looking to integrate website previews into your site, you may want to check them out.

We’ve Launched a New Self-Serve Advertising Portal for Bloggers and Publishers

We’ve launched a new self-serve portal for bloggers and other social media publishers. The new portal will enable us to fill even more of your ad inventory much more efficiently. If you’re already part of Technorati Media, you don’t need to do anything, you’ll be moved over. If you’re not, and you want to start monetizing your blog, you can sign up here.