The original YouTube Insights Summary page featured side-by-side modules of data, including several charts, maps, and graphs. While each module provided significant information and detail, the layout was crowded and not exactly the most user-friendly.

In contrast, the new YouTube Analytics Overview page presents the data in much simpler, easy-to-read sections. Instead of packing data into side-by-side boxes, the Overview page provides more basic statistics.

Besides the Summary, YouTube Insight also included Views, Discovery, Demographics, Community, and Subscribers sections. Much like the Summary, each section had a considerable amount of data, especially the Community and Discovery pages. Luckily, Analytics segmented the data more logically. Instead of combining Playback Locations and Traffic Sources under Discovery, they created separate sections them. Similarly, Insight’s Community section contained combined data about sharing, favorites, comments, and ratings. Analytics updated and separated user interactions into new categories: Likes and Dislikes, Favorites, Comments, and Sharing. As a result of creating additional sidebar options, the data is now much easier to find and explore.

Yet another feature of Insight that Analytics changed was Hot Spots. Insight allowed account holders to assess audience retention for individual videos, as well as the entire channel. Unfortunately, the only way to access Hot Spots was to find and select a certain video, which was actually more challenging than you’d think. While the search bar did offer some predictive technology, you weren’t able to view a list of all videos. Once you were able to find a particular video, a new menu appeared in the left sidebar, including the Hot Spots option. Finally!

In Analytics, the Audience Retention section goes into slightly more detail, but is comparable to Hot Spots. However, it is now much easier to access, since it’s now a main menu item in the left sidebar. Like Hot Spots, Audience Retention data is only available for individual videos, which brings me to my favorite (and final) Analytics feature.

Instead of using the search field in the left sidebar, each section now gives you the ability to select any video from your channel. Instead of bringing up two or three suggested videos as you type, you can simply click on the content section and view a list of all videos, which is a lot more convenient. You can easily switch back and forth between data for individual videos and your whole channel within each section.

If you haven’t used YouTube Analytics, or previously ignored YouTube Insight because there was just too much data in one tiny space, I suggest you try it. It provides statistics in an uncluttered, friendly format that even the most basic user can understand. If you’re serious about creating a better channel and content, Analytics is a free tool that you should be using to gain valuable insight.

Kristen Watson

Kristen Watson is a Search Marketing Associate at Direct Online Marketing.

Twitter - More Posts

Again, this is going to be very brief.  I didn’t have time for a longer post and didn’t want this to become stale.  You should see the terrific post I had going for how Herman Cain was handling online reputation management…and then he dropped out before I could finish and post.

Quick Beginner Notes on How Google AdWords Works

For those of you not intimately familiar with paid search marketing, a couple important notes that can be difficult to grasp:

1. Ads don’t necessarily display all the time.  With Google AdWords – and Microsoft adCenter for that matter – you may be advertising on a particular keyword, but not see your ad.  This can happen for a variety of reasons, but one of the most common is due to budget.  Usually you’ll set your account spend to be spread out evenly throughout the day, meaning that if you can only afford 100 clicks and Google estimates you’d get 150 if they ran you full force, you may only see your ad 2 out of every 3 times you check.*  To counteract this, I did run test searches multiple times, but that doesn’t mean I saw everything.
2. These are New Hampshire results.  Using Google’s Ad Preview Tool, I pulled searches specifically in the state of New Hampshire.  It’s possible candidates are targeting just certain districts (as we’re familiar with from running political search marketing campaigns).  So, if they only care about a particular part of NH for whatever reason, they could just be targeting that region and I wouldn’t be seeing their ads.  Also, the Preview Tool doesn’t let you open up links – I’d normally comment about landing pages as well.

   Update: Assuming he’s using the same tactics in NH as he is across the US, give Romney’s team credit.  Their landing pages are taking people to a donation page.  Click here to see (I stripped the extra tracking parameters from the url).

* Advertisers should also use Google’s Ad Preview Tool to weed out any personalization effects of search.

2012 NH Primary Search Engine Marketing

Alright, here we go.  In the interest of time, I ran only on exact candidate names (first name, last name) and just a couple phrases pulled completely at random.  Any proper AdWords campaign concerned with anything other than branding will have much larger lists of keywords.

The following is the search term and who I could see advertising on them, in order of Iowa results for candidates.  I’m including Michele Bachmann even though she ended her campaign just now because…well I already did the searches.

Update: Now two days after the primary, some more sites are cashing in.  New advertisers noted in green to distinguish.

• Mitt Romney: himself, followthemoney.com on a couple searches, then CSPAN later, then finally Rock the Vote. Now add gopmall.com.
• Rick Santorum: none the first day.  Now people jumping on board: Rock the Vote and livefreeordiealliance.com.
• Ron Paul: therealnews.com a couple times.  Later the Endorse Liberty YouTube channel (youtube.com/EndorseLiberty). BTW – did you notice the YouTube layout changes Google stealthily made over the holidays?
• Newt Gingrich: himself (newtgingrich360.com).  And now a new one, also from Gingrich – the awesomely named newthampshire.com.
• Rick Perry: followthemoney.com
• Michele Bachmann: followthemoney.com, Minnesota Public Radio (minnesota.publicradio.org).  Later CSPAN.  Now,the Endorse Liberty YouTube channel – seems like odd timing.
• Jon Huntsman: followthemoney.com

Takeaways

Here are a few things I found interesting, in no particular order:

• Interesting that in most cases the ads were showing at the bottom of the page, rather than the top where Google was showing Iowa Republican Caucus results in most cases (its own, bug with credit given to AP) along with news results and sometimes image results.  Speaking of which, some of these candidates are just getting destroyed still by Googlebombing image results.  Unless, of course, the Newt Gingrich photo of him posing in tinfoil hat with Nazi flag is an official campaign photo that I’m not aware of.
• Mitt was going strong earlier this morning, but now I’m having trouble triggering his ads at all.  Maybe he ran out of money in that campaign due to higher search volumes?
• Interesting how CSPAN has jumped into this advertising so heavily this afternoon.  They must be paying a pretty penny.
• 

  "Really, guys? C'mon!"

  No love for Rick Santorum?  Seriously?  The guy lost by 8 votes, which I can, like, count on my hands.  Quality Score issues aside, isn’t there an entrepreneur out there that can take advantage of the lack of competition and make some money here? Photo Credit: AP Photo/Eric Gay.

• Although, CSPAN surely hasn’t paid as much as followthemoney.org.  Fortunately for them, they’re paying only on a per click basis and not per impression.  (This assumes they’re not doing cost per acquisition bidding, which should be a safe assumption).  Curious why they’re not on all the candidates – would love to know if that’s a budget issue, oversight, part of their plan based on who they think has a shot at winning, or other.
• I know it’s early with Iowa just wrapping, but really surprised not to see more PACs there.
• Equally if not more surprised the political campaigns aren’t advertising on their opponents’ names.  Perhaps there’s a gentleman’s / woman’s agreement as being part of the party?  You wouldn’t guess it by some of the talk by the candidates themselves.

What stood out to you?

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

Similar to Facebook and Twitter, your channel now has a feed. Your channel feed displays any content you decide to share. Any of your interactions, such as comments, uploads, favorites, and likes are automatically posted to your channel feed. Additionally, your subscribers are able to view your activities on their homepages.

Your YouTube channel feed allows you to manually post your own updates and activity as well. Interestingly, posts don’t have to be linked to any YouTube content, although they do give you the option. The YouTube channel feed appears to be similar to Facebook and Twitter feeds, so it isn’t exactly innovative in concept, but it’s a nice addition for those who enjoy sharing.

To edit your channel and change settings, simply click on the “Edit Channel” button in the top left corner. You can make changes to your channel’s appearance by adding an avatar and background image or color. However, the most important option found in the Appearance section is the “Switch back to the old channels design” button. If you hate the new look (after giving it a fair chance, of course), simply click the button to revert your channel back to the old version. It’s extremely easy.

Are you going to make the switch and start using the Feed?

Kristen Watson

Kristen Watson is a Search Marketing Associate at Direct Online Marketing.

Twitter - More Posts

By making us wait so long (they kicked off notorious troublemakers like Sesame Street for trying to use the original launch of Google+ for persons as an organizational page), they really built up anticipation, so we were all pretty excited at the news today.  Heck, even SEOdog was running around and barking like a rabies-addled pooch.  Or maybe that was just because there were scary-looking 10-year-olds walking out front.

How Do I set Up a Google+ Page for My Business?

We’re glad you asked, Rhetorical Writing Device.  Just click here.  You’ll first have to sign in, so you’ll either need to have an existing Google account (maybe you have gmail or have hooked up your existing email to services like Docs or Calendar) or create a new one.

NOTE: Unless this changes in the future, this Google+ Page is going to be tied to your Google+ profile like facebook pages.  Therefore, you’ll want to make sure you’re doing it from an account with a person least likely to leave your employ.  I believe you could also set up a business account with Google Apps and tie it through that, but trust me – that’s a pain in the tuchus if a Google+ Page is your only reason for creating an account.

Once you get in, you have five basic choices for page type:

• Local Business or Place
• Product or Brand
• Company, Institution or Organization
• Arts, Entertainment or Sports
• Other

Even though it doesn’t have as many choices as facebook pages (6 basic variations: Local Business or Place; Company, Organization or Institution; Brand or Product; Artist, Band or Public Figure; Entertainment; and Cause or Community), I really like the Other choice as a catchall since you can’t anticipate all the different legitimate variations.

From there, you can write a short description of the page, upload a logo, and add a status update.  You should also be able to add photos and videos, but they don’t make it easy on you to do so, at least with videos – why no easy YouTube integration?

Alright, I’m Set Up.  Now What?

Well, there’s not really much to do at the moment besides update statuses and add folks to your circles.  It’s really kind of a letdown after so much time in beta.  But features will be coming soon and there may be some SEO benefits down the road.  It will also be nice to comment and like, I mean +1 things publicly as the company as opposed to needing to do it through a personal Google+ profile.  Update for clarity: You can only add individual Google+ ‘ers if they’ve added you to their circles.  Same thing about +1′ing their statuses.  There’s also no way currently to +1 search results or other pages off the Google+ site itself as your page.

Although, if you’re a big enough brand, there is one cool feature called Direct Connect.  If people type “+” in front of your company name in the search bar, they can be taken directly to your Google+ Page from the dropdown.  Here’s what it looks like if you search for “+Pepsi”:

See An Example of a Google+ Page

Want to see an example?  Check out our Google+ Page.  Not much going on so far, but be sure to check back soon and add us to your circles.

Get Found on

on Google+

One snark – Google makes it easy for you to create a Google+ Page badge.  I do find it amusing that the alt tag is neglected.  Call Matt Cutts!

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

I’m writing this today as I have just finished writing a letter of commendation to a couple people on behalf of Detective Burns of the Charleston (WV) Police Department who went above and beyond the call of duty.  I figured he deserved some praise on the ‘net in addition to written letters to his boss and the Mayor.

Additionally, I’m hoping that it will provide some information in case you find yourself in a similar situation as it turned out to be incredibly difficult for a lay person – especially one who did not know him – to track this person down.  Also, I hope it serves as a public shaming for twitter for their callousness in lack of response.

Backstory: The Suicide Threat

Without getting into details about the person, as I said, we received notification of the suicide threat on twitter.  Without getting into it, I was reasonably sure the person was on twitter.  I had a name that might or might not be correct (it was), and if the picture was of him, I could roughly guess his age.  That was it.

My first call was to the Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255 figuring they had dealt with this sort of thing before.  They were of no help, which was really a bit scary.

Then I called my local (Wheeling, WV) police department.  Incredibly nice, but didn’t see anyone in their database with that name and couldn’t help.

So then I tried to track down a phone number to twitter, which is no easy task.  With enough digging, you can find an email address – help@twitter.com, to which I submitted an email.  After a couple bad phone numbers, I eventually found one that worked: 415-222-9670.  You won’t get anyone live, but you do have an option for law enforcement (#1), so I left a message as well.  Additionally, I mentioned them on my own twitter feed in the hope they might see that.

Twitter never responded and I doubt ever looked into.  I get they’re busy.  But this is potentially a matter of life and death.  I was crushed at work that day, but still took out 3 hours.  If there is any sort of protocol – which again, I doubt – they failed miserably.  That’s why I titled this post as such.  While suicide is in no way a joking manner, my hope is an inflammatory post may get them to rethink how they handle such requests in the future.  And for that matter, the Suicide Prevention folks, although that may be as simple as reaching out to facebook, twitter, MySpace, et al, to develop some procedures.

In the meantime, this person changed his display name, took the account private, then deleted it entirely.  I had written down the display name, so I had that, but I did not screen cap his followers / following, so I had no way to reach out to people that knew him and could check on him. This would be my #1 recommendation in the future to do that quickly and send out some quick check-ins with those folks. 

Finally, I called the Charleston WV police just as kind of a last effort.  It took me forever to get someone on the line no matter what phone # I tried – truly disheartening – but I did eventually get hooked up with a Detective Burns (sp?).  The detective is their internet crimes guy.  When I asked if he had to deal with really awful child porn type cases, he casually replied that he had some up on one of his screens right then.  I cannot imagine how awful of a job that is and sincerely thank Det.  Burns and everyone in law enforcement that deals with those evil people.

Through some well, detective work, Det. Burns finally tracked down the young man, then followed up with me letting me know everything was okay.  So for this, I salute you, Det. Burns.

What to Do If Someone You See Threatens Suicide on Twitter

I’m sure there isn’t a one-size fits all solution, but based on my experience, here’s what I’d do:

1. Screenshot at least a page worth of:

1. Their tweets (so you can see with whom they’ve interacted recently)
2. Their followers
3. Whom they are following

Hopefully one day there will be a useful way to contact twitter and the Suicide Prevention folks and enlist their help.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

Engage Your Audience with Company Status UpdatesHi Justin,LinkedIn is excited to announce a powerful new feature for Company Pages—”Status Updates“. What can you do with Status Updates? Post updates directly from your company overview page. Share company announcements, product releases, promotions, and other news. Engage directly with your followers and possibly their entire network. Optimize the conversation by seeing which updates are most engaging. Here are a couple of companies using Status Updates to engage easily with their followers and prospective customers: 3Cinteractive, Rackspace Hosting. Go to your Company Page Try it today! The LinkedIn Company Pages Team Note: Updates can only be made by company “Administrators” when the Company Page is set to “Designated Admins Only”. If you are not an “Administrator”, please request access from the relevant person at your company.

Well, maybe yours wasn’t addressed to “Justin.”

Sounds great, right?  It is.  So you head on over to your company page and…there’s no frickin’ place to add updates or any instructions on how to do so.  This may  not be true for all of you, but I’m guessing it will for many, so I’ve put this post together to save some frustration.

How to Be Able to Add LinkedIn Company Status Updates

If you’re not seeing the status update box, you’ll need to click on the Admin Tools button in the upper right, then drop down to the Edit link.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll get into the section where you can change logos, edit your profile, etc.  if you haven’t already designated a company administrator, you’ll see this message displayed pretty prominently:

I guess they set it up this way as an extra safeguard, but if I set up my company profile, shouldn’t I be opted in to having admin rights already?  The select feature is also kind of infuriating as when you start typing in your (or others’) names, they actually give you more people to choose from, instead of narrowing down to fewer based on the actual name you’re typing.

Regardless, once you’ve gotten into the profile edit section, it’s all pretty clear how to set up and start using LinkedIn company updates.  You’d think LinkedIn would tell you that somewhere, like say on the video they set up to explain how to use updates.

They kind of do on their FAQ page (and mention you need to be an admin at the bottom of the email, but without instructions on how to do so), but it’s yet another example of LinkedIn offering some great tools – albeit ones that should have been available long ago – that it doesn’t promote very effectively.

But now that you know it’s there and how to get it going, it should be a nice tool.  Have at it!

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

“That was quick,” I thought to myself.  Facebook forced recommendations in the upper right hand corner of business pages only back in July.  I was guessing they just received a lot of negative feedback from big advertisers who were tired of trying to police their pages from facetious recommendations.  Like, say, ESPN (and trust me, this is just one of many examples – you could do a drinking game hitting refresh and looking for sarcastic recommendations):

Turns out if you click on the link can read, they’re only getting rid of facebook Reviews and Discussions “tabs.”  I think it’s cute they’re still officially referred to as tabs even though they’ve been nothing but really menu items since facebook’s layout change.

So instead of cowing to advertiser complaints and removing negative discussion from being so visible, facebook has moved in the opposite direction making it (and positive discussion) more in your face.

Fare thee well, Reviews and Discussions.  We hardly knew ye.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

Yet again we have the Farmville faithful sharpening their pitchforks and virtual marching into Mark Zuckerburg’s office and telling him straight just what they think about Facebook’s ‘improvements’.

But Tuesday’s tweak which saw a ticker added to the top right and suggested subscriptions below it didn’t even hint at what to come Thursday.

It’s hard to fathom which will confuse the layman more: Facebook’s Timeline or the alleged ability of neutrinos to arrive in front of their own timeline.

Both are causing a monumental stir; and both could be monumentally wrong.

If you haven’t had the chance to check out Facebook’s Timeline, you can see an overview of it here. You can also give it a test run before it goes live next Thursday by following these instructions.

There’s no denying it’s brave. But, it’s also not the average user’s point of interaction. It’s a revamped profile page that assumes to be the one-stop-shop of your entire life. I personally like it in the same way I like jazz: technically impressive, but hard to sing along to.

But layout bitching may not the main bone of contention.

I’m more inclined to fall into line with Slate’s claim that Facebook is killing taste with ‘frictionless sharing’.

Mark Zuckerberg wants you to share. He doesn’t much care if you want to share. Sharing, in Zuckerberg’s view, has morphed from an affirmative act—that video was hilarious, I think I’ll Like it!—to something more like an unconscious state of being. I watched that video, and therefore it will be shared.

Call it noise as a brand strategy.

Genius! Or is it? Feel free vent accordingly.

Paul Woodhouse

Paul looks after the SEO side of things here at Direct Online Marketing as well as trying to work out the best social media strategies for our clients.

Danger Will...Zuckerberg

Update: mea culpa time.  Facebook added this feature to all pages with a local component (those set up as local pages or on other pages where the information tab has been edited to include an address).  Instead of editing, though, this feature really just allows you to suggest edits so facebook can get better information on local businesses.

According to Josh Constine, Lead Writer of Inside Facebook, “The ‘Suggest Edits’ does not allow Facebook users to make unauthorized changes to Pages they aren’t an admin of. Instead, it allows users to suggest a change to the Page’s basic information which Facebook or a Page’s admins can then decide to implement or ignore.”

You can read IF’s post on the subject here.  Note the difference in their screenshot from the original one on this post all the way at the bottom.  The first time you get any inkling that you are only suggesting a change is after you hit the button that says “Edit”, when you get this screenshot:

Lesson re-learned.  I’ll take it all the way through to the end and actually make the edits before I post.  Was scared to harm someone’s page, but could have done something innocuous.  My apologies for the confusion.  I’ll leave this up so you can see how to pull down your page in the future if you need to do so for whatever reason.

I’m sure (hope?) this will get corrected soon before stuff hits the fan, but right now it’s possible for non-admins to edit your facebook pages.  Obviously, this could be disastrous.

Your best bet for the time being may be to take down your page altogether.  Will update here and on our own facebook page when this gets fixed / we learn more.

Update: Should have included this before, but the easiest way to protect yourself is to just take the page off-line.  Here’s how:

1. Click on the Edit Page button.
2. This should take you directly to the Manage Permissions tab.  At the top of the tab, check the box for “Only admins can see this page.”
3. Click on the Save Changes button.

Then once things return back to normal, just go back in, uncheck, and save changes again.

And just in case, yes, I did check a friend’s company page who went through these steps.  If you put in the url, it just redirects you to your facebook home.

Also, I’ve decided not to make this a step-by-step guide on how to hack into other people’s facebook pages.  But it’s not difficult. And the loophole is still there.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

Facebook has had Reviews for business pages for quite some time, but just last week* launched Recommendations.

* Don’t hold me to that time frame.  I started this post right after I first saw the addition, but it’s been sitting in draft mode for some time.  My beard isn’t touching the desk, so I’m pretty confident it’s a 2011 thing.

So what are facebook Recommendations and how do they differ from Reviews?  Well, personification of rhetorical device for writing this post, I’m glad you asked.

What are Facebook Recommendations?

Let’s start with the basics. When you go to a facebook page (as opposed to a profile – you can’t recommend Aunt Mable for her famous chili con queso), you’ll see  a “Recommend This Place widget over on the right hand side, like this:

If you choose to recommend a page, you simply write whatever you’d like in the recommendation box, choose whom you want to see it (everyone by default), then hit the recommend button.

But maybe you don’t want everyone to see it – no worries.  You have several options as you can see here:

Here are your sharing options:

• Everyone
• Friends Only
• Friends of Friends
• Only Me
• Specific Friends (enter manually)
• Your Networks

You can also choose to hide from particular people.  This can come in handy when you want to recommend that cleaning service that you didn’t tell your spouse about and s/he thinks it’s you doing all the work.

The recommendations will then show up in the same spot on the right hand side with the recommender’s profile pic, name, and comment.  If their network has left comments or liked the recommendation, you can see this here, too.

As a page admin, you can’t remove the option for people to recommend your place.  You probably wouldn’t want to do this anyway unless you’re experiencing a healthy dose of sarcastic reviews. And if you don’t think that’s a potential issue, check out these “recs” for ESPN.

Speaking of which, you can’t actually even see a recommendation unless it’s marked for everyone or you happen to be in the recommender’s list of friends or other settings as marked.

If an individual recommendation is marked to be viewed by all, you can see it and you can hide it from appearing on your page – just hover over the recommendation and click on the x like you would to remove a comment.

To learn more, you can read facebook’s official explanation.

How are Facebook Recommendations Different from Reviews?

In a few ways, including:

• Location.  Recommendations appear in the upper right.  A link for reviews (if not hidden) appears on the left hand side where you can click to read on a separate page.
• Reach.  Reviews are left for everyone on the business’ page.  You can do that with a recommendation, but you can also make it more personal and just show to certain users.
• Format.  Reviews have comments and star ratings; recommendations just comments.
• Commenting & Liking.  Anyone can comment or like a review, but only people within that person’s network can comment or like a recommendation.

When you want to leave a review, you simply click on the link if you have that option for a page.  (If they do have it, you can also just add “?sk=reviews” to the end of the url.)  Then give it a star rating and leave your comment:

And if your page is popular, you’ll get all sorts of reviews – positive, negative, and spam links to chat rooms from women with interesting…profiles.  Like Starbucks does!

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?