Project Metal - Services (May 2010)
- 1. Services www.projectmetal.com Project Metal Services Page 1
- 2. Overview Project Metal is a digital consultancy that is designed to help companies maximize their engagement with stakeholders across all digital networks and manage brand reputations. It does this by monitoring and analyzing the current engagement of all stakeholders across all digital networks; creating, optimizing and distributing digital content; providing direct to customer engagement and impact analysis to understand the actions that resulted from campaigns. The company is a data-driven consultancy and provides: • A rigorous approach to defining and engaging market influencers within digital networks • A standard approach for understanding a company‟s online reputation and presenting conversation analysis • A standard methodology for defining, measuring and presenting a company‟s market engagement in the key conversations • The ability to develop creative digital content assets that leverage PR, digital creative and technology understanding • The optimization of content produced and tracking of traffic that results from key media coverage • An analytics-based approach to measuring the business impact of its campaigns The rapid growth of internet, the emergence of new technologies and the spread of broadband has dramatically changed the media landscape. Paid for content is having a diminishing impact due to the fragmentation of media and the breadth and choice that the internet offers. Companies have the ability to interact with their consumers directly through social platforms Interesting contributed (publisher or individual) content is highly consumed, as links are distributed by individuals Companies that drive media that is earned and combine it with media they own will be highly effective at driving customer conversation, conversion and creating brand awareness. Project Metal Services Page 2
- 3. Service Overview: This combination of the rapidly fragmenting media landscape and the increasing volume of user generated content has made it harder than ever for companies to manage their brand reputations online, to find and connect with potential customers. Digital Brand Management & Engagement Project Metal provides strategic advice to companies on how to manage their online reputations, engage in social media with the maximum impact and track against business objectives. Project Metal‟s Methodology takes a holistic view of all earned digital media (published content and user contributed content) and looks at it across the entire marketing funnel from awareness through to a purchase. Our methodology integrates specialist digital skill sets to provide quality of service, consistency of message all anchored in an in-depth understanding of a client‟s business. Project Metal Services Page 3
- 4. Analytics It is now possible to apply the exact same measurement strategies to PR that have been effective for other forms of online marketing for over a decade. By integrating web analytics, search analytics, audience data with traditional online media content measurement, Project Metal can directly measure the financial value of earned media campaigns and advise on how they can be optimized. The three core media analytics products and services that Project Metal offers are: Influencer Identification Project Metal has developed a rigorous approach to creating an Influencer Index, which enables a company to identify the key influencers for a brand on any given conversation topic. Project Metal takes a holistic approach across all digital influencers looking simultaneously at both influential publishers, whether they are bloggers or online media, as well as influential communities and individuals in those communities. Conversation Mapping A Conversation Map, which defines the conversations that exist around any one brand by volume and tone. These conversations can be broken down into Published Content (from established sources and Contributed Content (user generated). For example, Published Content might focus on the financial performance of the company but the Contributed Content might highlight customer service as the single biggest conversation topic. Conversation mapping gives you the ability to map onto key topics or understand how issues are discussed. Earned Media Planning and Optimization Using a combination of media analytics, search analytics and web analytics, Project Metal is able to measure how much traffic is generated to a brand‟s website through any mention of the brand in earned media. For any given campaign, Project Metal is able to identify the traffic generated by activities across different types of earned media including, online media, blogs, YouTube videos, and mentions in online communities, regardless of whether there is a link in the article or post concerned. By using Project Metal‟s Integrated Data analytics capabilities, it is possible for companies to compare the customer acquisition costs for an earned media campaign to the cost of a paid media advertising campaign. Project Metal Services Page 4
- 5. Example Deliverable: Deliverable: A list of sites with unpaid media that generated the greatest traffic and sales for products listed above: A ranking of how each type of online media (e.g., forums, blogs, microblogs, mainstream news, video, etc.) contribute to traffic and sales for specific products (above): A ranking of which how each characteristic of online coverage impacts traffic and sales. Project Metal Services Page 5
- 6. Engagement Project Metal‟s design and development team deliver creative, well thought out media assets. We ensure exceptional creative and employ the most effective technology platforms. Our application development is done in-house ensuring everything is developed within our project team. Our developers work closely with our designers ensuring that the technical integration of the design is seamless and in-line with designer expectations. We offer design, build and support services for a wide range of online properties including social media applications, websites, intranets, applications, games and banners; and specialize in delivering in multi-language. Services are divided by: - Social Web Presence - Social Platforms - Social Applications Project Metal Services Page 6
- 7. Social Web Presence Building a social web presence allows a brand to promote to, and interact with, their customers within their own defined space. The cost of a social web presence depends on the functionality required but typically costs between $15k and $150k. AMD Black Ops was designed to support the launch of a new AMD processor. On the day of launch it broadcasted streaming live video of 7 teams around the world competing to “overclock” the latest AMD processor. The site integrated tightly with existing overclocking conversations across all the key social platforms. Results Seeded across key enthusiast forums and in the specialist media, the site attracted over 45,000 hits during the event—the equivalent of 483 man days of engagement (11,588 hours of streaming video views). Verisign This VeriSign content hub celebrates the last 25 years of the .com revolution. The site was built to promote VeriSign‟s celebration events and stewardship of the .com domain and integrates all social media channels Results The site has had over 38,000 views in the first three months. Project Metal Services Page 7
- 8. Social Platforms Building presences within social platforms allows a brand to place itself directly where their users are browsing. HP You on You This unique HP YouTube brand channel was versioned for 11 countries and implemented technologies within the YouTube environment that allowed users to use a webcam, and edit videos on the channel. Results The channel received 2,729,053 channel views with 6,176 channel subscribers. The channel was one of the most successful brand channels in YouTube history Pepsi Refresh Studio Pepsi Refresh This YouTube brand channel brought people together from around the web to create collaborative music videos. Visitors are able to contribute their own music, and/or produce videos. The brand channel was advertised during the VMA‟s driving traffic to the site. Project Metal Services Page 8
- 9. Social Applications Social applications sit on websites or in social networks and can vary from reasonably simple competition engines placed in Facebook as per the example below through to more complex e- commerce systems and rich media uploads. Sony Ericsson Project Metal produced this competition engine that allowed Sony Ericsson to create multiple competitions within their Facebook Fan page. The competition engine allows the management of both the competition build and also the ongoing entries. Results The competition engine handled over 10000 entries in its first 2 days of being live. Impulse Diaries This fun application for Impulse encourages users to become the sixth member of the Saturdays. The user uploads their image and manipulates it into the body image of the sixth member. The image created can be saved as wallpaper or sent to friends. Project Metal Services Page 9
- 10. Content Optimization At Project Metal, we offer an integrated and comprehensive service of both paid and natural search services. Our specialists work with you to optimize all your assets and ensure that your paid search campaigns are run in an efficient and cost effective way. This ensures the best exposure for your brand in either paid or natural search results or both. Visibility Analysis Once we understand your business and the important metrics for you, we create a comprehensive keyword research, competitor and website content assessment. This ensures you are fully aware of what words to use in PR driven content, what the competition is up to and whether there are any weaknesses on the existing client site. Keyword Research Keyword research is the cornerstone of all search work. Whether paid or natural work, the initial keyword research ensures that there is a complete understanding of what language nuances are being used by stakeholders when searching for a product, service, issue or business. This means you have the capability to optimize and capture traffic though the content you produce. Competitor & Content Audit Ensuring the content on your site can be found is important and that means ensuring the right keywords are used in the right areas in the right density within the textual content of the site, the correct meta data has been utilized in the head sections with keywords inserted in the correct places in those tags and there is no keyword cannibalization on the site. This audit is an analysis of the strength of the competition in the search results, both real and perceived. These factors include a technical check, keyword use, social strategy and link profile of your site and the competition. We provide insight about the client site threats from competitors‟ weaknesses which can be addressed and any strengths to build on, or to exploit the competition is outlined. This competitive part of this analysis is repeated every 3 months to ensure your site stays in touch with the competition. CASE STUDY: ORGANIC OPTIMISATION Transport Direct was suffering from a poorly optimized website which was not targeting the right keywords. We executed a keyword research project to uncover the best generic terms for them to target (e.g. route planner, journey planner) and recommended changes around content based on sector competition. We worked around technical constraints to focus on content, keyword density and linking strategy distributing optimized news and content. This resulted in a 13% increase in traffic from natural search to a total of almost 6 million visitors. We achieved number one rankings for 178 terms and achieved a total of 644 top 30 search results. This resulted in a 44% increase in number of terms referring traffic to the site and when costed out, represented a CPC (cost per click) of $0.006. Project Metal Services Page 10
- 11. Content Asset Optimization A fantastic video, beautiful image, insightful whitepaper, brilliantly authored web content or press release not only deserves to be found but is also hugely valuable as it can influence search results. Image & Video Optimization Optimizing video and image content is essential now as assets are automatically pulled into search results when relevant. Video and image results have been shown through eyetracking studies to alter the way people look at the search results as well meaning more brand exposure when they are pulled through into the results. Optimizing these assets will help companies increase presence and awareness within generic and brand searches. Geotagging, appearing in Google Maps and other optimization techniques ensure a broad range of potential touch points are covered. Whitepaper and Press Release Optimization & Distribution Once created, well-written documents containing important information can become lost within the massive sea of data online. Our service ensures that all documents become highly optimized to ensure appropriate targeting and the ability to capture traffic. Distributing press releases and interactive content ensures that the potential to improve the visibility of both the news and the website are maximized, creating valuable link equity and media attention. With most search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and Yandex, a portion of the way a site‟s value is determined is through the number, type and location of links pointing at it. One of the most important services we offer is creating a natural increase in the number and type of links pointing to your site which ultimately drives traffic and awareness. Creating linkable content Creating a web presence is only the start of building a strong business identity on and offline. It is important to continually drive awareness and new people to purchase, as well as to keep bringing existing visitors back again and again. Our creative content service brings together our expertise in creating highly linkable, compelling content with our expertise in increasing web visibility. Creative Content & link building Compelling content drives visitors, links and engagement. Project Metal advises on and creates interesting articles around key topics or issues and seeds that content in key areas to generate interest and buzz around it. By both creating the content and driving the buzz around it, we can ensure your site gets the attention it deserves. Project Metal Services Page 11
- 12. Online Reputation Management No one likes to think about the worst happening but at times it already has. Online reputation has rapidly become a core part of any online strategy. Our digital experts have helped brands correct bad search results including deliberate online targeting of search results as well as attempts to harm a brands reputation online through negative search results. We approach online reputation management as an ongoing process, though a project can last anything from one week to several years, depending on the level of support needed. We actively monitor and manipulate search results to remove harmful or deliberately antagonistic results in order to present a company (or person) in the most positive possible light. CASE STUDY: CNN In December 2008 walesonline.co.uk ran a story detailing how Lynne and Kenneth Shaw claimed broadcaster CNN had put their lives at risk by detailing their location during the terror attacks in Mumbai. This story was untrue but was subsequently reported upon by a number of publications and blogs causing online searches on the topic to be dominated by negative posts about CNN. The strategy had to be swift and decisive to minimize the extremely damaging impact of this story. We moved in and utilizing a strategy of link building, press releases and CNN internal linking guidance, we were able to make rapid and lasting changes to the search results. As a result of our strategy factual posts contributed to 100% of the number 1 results and 85% of the top 3 results for related keywords (previously 55% and 56% respectively). Search keywords such as „CNN endanger welsh couple‟ previously produced 80% negative results on the first page of search results but due to our strategy this completely turned around to produce 70% factual/neutral using the same keywords. We had successfully and swiftly ensured people searching for keywords around CNN and this story would find the true story as opposed to this negative and damaging untruth. Project Metal Services Page 12