In the wake of Charlie Sheen’s recent shenanigans, companies with smart marketing people are jumping on the chance to capitalize on the buzz. In case you missed it, Sheen’s been quite busy the last couple of weeks. He’s ranted his way through several interviews, been fired from his hit TV show Two and Half Men, and even set a new Guinness World Record for Twitter for the “Fastest Time to Reach 1 Million Followers”. Oh, and who can forget his totally winning Ustream channel.

Sheen’s created quite a buzz recently and companies are cashing in, check out how these four companies have capitalized on Sheen’s buzz.

Poster Revolution

Poster revolution quickly grabbed a promoted tweet on the hashtag #tigerblood and #planbetter which started trending quickly after the ABC interview which aired the evening of March 1st and has been going strong ever since.

Why #tigerblood? Well that was one of the references Charlie Sheen has used during his recent interviews. Poster Revolution seized this opportunity and purchased a promoted tweet on the hastag and has been running this tweet on the stream to sell their Winning poster of Sheen.

At the time of this screen shot, the proted tweet has already received 825 retweets. I betcha they’ve sold a couple posters with this move. Pretty smart move I’d say.

Ford Vs. Iffinity

Car makers Ford and Iffinity have also jumped at purchasing promoted tweets on Charlie Sheen related hashtags. They’ve chosen to run on #Winning and you can now catch promoted tweets like this one from Infinity at the top of the stream for #Winning.

Infinity has chosen to tie the hash tag to a current promotional giveaway for a trip the NCAA Final Four. I’m sure they’re promotion has caught a bit more attention using these promoted tweets and surfing the Sheen wave then they would otherwise. Great job Infinity!

Spirit Airlines

Another interesting campaign that caught my eye is from Spirit Airlines. These guys have tied the Charlie Sheen phenomenon to a sale on airfare. They’ve dubbed it the “Living The Dream Sale” and are using tag lines like “Winning Fares”, and “Tiger Blood Not Required.

All of these companies are seizing the opportunity to jump into a conversation sparked by something totally un-related to their business. They’ve jumped outside the box and found a way to capitalize on a high volume conversation that’s already been ignited.

Don’t be afraid to try something different in your marketing mix, you can even celebrate your success with a Charlie Sheen cookie or a Charlie Dog topped with #tigerblood.

That’s right folks, if you’ve been holding onto that Facebook Share button for dear life it’s time to loosen your grip. Facebook has updated their Like button to include all the functionality of the old Share button. Now, a full story complete with headline, blurb, and thumbnail is posted to the walls of all who adore you and their friends can share and comment on it too!

Prior to these upgrades, the Like button only posted a link to the story in a user’s recent activity, and everyone breezed by it on their way to view the other cool stuff their friends posted. I don’t know about you guys, but with all the other cool stuff the Like button can do, I don’t see a need for the Share button anymore and neither does Facebook. Development on the Share button has been retired and they recommend using the Like button going forward. However, Facebook will continue to support the Share button for all you die-hard Share button lovers, who can’t let go.

WebShare is proud to be presenting GAUGE 2011: the first two-day, for users, by users Google Analytics User Conference and Training Day along with Google Certified Partners VKI Studios, PublicInsite, E-Nor and Analytics Pros.

What: Google Analytics User Conference + Training Day
Where: Co-located with eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, San Francisco (Marriott Marquis)
When: March 17th & 18th, 2011
Discount: Discounts are available for all WebShare clients – please call your account manager for details

This two day event is filled to the brim with Google Analytics goodness:

• Keynote by WebShare’s Justin Cutroni and state-of-the-product address by Google’s Phil Mui
• A dozen interactive sessions led by some of the world’s foremost experts on Google Analytics
• Helpdesks staffed by Google and Google Certified Partners to get your toughest questions answered
• Breakfast, lunch and an evening reception
• A second day with three different training workshop tracks – Google Analytics Fundamentals, Marketing & Analysis, and Technical Implementation

If Google Analytics is a part of your business, then don’t miss this opportunity to:

• Take your GA skills to the next level – everything from implementation and advanced analysis to marketing tracking and API visualizations will be covered! [full agenda]
• Network with hundreds of other Google Analytics professionals and enthusiasts
• Bump shoulders and discuss your issues with Google staff and Google Certified Partners
• Pick your track and get trained up on Google Analytics from true certified experts & practitioners

Head over to http://www.gaugecon.com for more details or to register for this event…see you at GAUGE 2011!

Here at WebShare we like to think of Justin as our secret weapon in the war against bad data, but since he’s published three books on the subject and is now nominated as Innovator of the year in the Web Analytics Association’s Awards for Excellence, it’s safe to say the secret is out!

We’re proud of the work Justin does in the analytics world everyday–both for clients and the community at large.  His nomination specifically recognizes his ability to both explain the high level concepts and then roll up his sleeves and actually make the code work.  We couldn’t agree more and anyone who’s had the opportunity to attend one of Justin’s Google Analytics Seminars has had a chance to see that breadth of knowledge and real-world experience in action.

The awards will be given out during the WAA’s Spring Awards Gala during eMetrics, and if you’ll be in town, please stop by and say hello!

The Search Alliance (a.k.a. Bing and Yahoo! PPC) have announced a change to their trademark policies to go into effect on March 3rd, 2011.  Much like the Google AdWords trademark policy has been for some time, the Search Alliance will no longer investigate the use of trademark terms in keywords.  They will still investigate the unauthorized use of trademarked terms in ad text when presented with a complaint by a trademark owner.  This change just means advertisers can now bid on trademarked terms, as they can in AdWords, they just can’t use those terms in their ad text.

The Search Alliance states that by aligning their “trademark policy with the current industry standard, we hope to help simplify your marketing efforts across the various online advertising programs.”

If you have a Facebook Page you have been alerted to some pending changes. Last Thursday Facebook announced Facebook Page upgrades and rolled out the option for Page administrators to upgrade to the new format early. All Pages will change to the new format on March 10th. Quite a bit has changed including components of the layout, types of activities Pages can participate in, and even the way content is displayed on a Page.

Several of the new features are extremely useful and will help businesses to manage and market their Pages more effectively. The game is changing; make sure you’re in on the action!

1. Use Facebook as Page

Perhaps the most requested feature of all time on Facebook, is the ability of Pages to interact with users, groups, and other Pages. Pages have been locked out of most interactions on Facebook, requiring businesses to interact with a personal Profile instead which has worked well for some and has proven to be a major pain for others causing them to miss out on a prime opportunity to build relationships with consumers.

Full interaction with everyone is not yet an option for Pages. However, now you can use Facebook as your Page and interact with other Pages. Your Page can “like” other Pages instead of just adding them as favorites and you can leave comments and post to other Pages as your Page. This makes it easy to interact with other industry Pages as your company or brand.

Once you’ve upgraded your Page, you’ll see the link “Use Facebook as ____” in the top right corner of your Page. You can also access this feature in the account dropdown.

2. Photo Strip

Similar to the new Facebook Profile, the photo strip has been applied to Facebook Pages. The most recent photos on the Page will now be showcased across the top of the page.

3. Edit Page Category

Another sought after feature of Facebook Pages is the ability to change your Page category once the Page is created. Before the recent upgrades if you registered your Page as a product or service and later wanted it to show up as a local business you were left with the option to delete the Page and re-create it in a different category.

Now, the option shows up at the very top of the information you can edit on the back end of the Page. We regularly audit Facebook Pages for clients and find many times Pages are inaccurately categorized, I’m super excited for this new feature!

4. Alerts

The coolest part about using Facebook as your Page is the alerts! Notifications will appear as they do on your personal account for your Page while you use Facebook as your Page. You will be notified of new likes, comments, and posts making it a little easier to keep track of activity on the Page so businesses can effectively participate in the conversation.

5. Email Notifications

Once you upgrade your Page you’ll also be automatically enrolled in email notifications. Each time Facebook detects new activity on your Page you will receive an email at the address listed in your Facebook account. Note that these email notifications are on roughly an hour delay.

You can edit the email address the notifications are sent to or turn them off in the Page’s settings as well as in the settings of your personal Profile.

6. Wall Filters

The changes to the wall filters are the most controversial of all the Page changes. The filters have been simplified down to two options; view posts from everyone or just the Page. You will also find additional settings for filtering out profanity, setting an age limit, and created a moderation block list.

Sounds good right, so what’s so controversial? The algorithm controlling the order of posts has changed. Facebook has moved from sorting the posts chronologically to sorting them based on relevancy. Posts will now show up in order of relevance instead of the newest posts at the top of the page. If you rely on your Facebook Page to do business in real time, you can use Facebook as your Page and take advantage of both the email notifications and the built in alert system to ensure nothing is missed because it is deemed less relevant and moved to the bottom of the Page by Facebook.

Page administrators can also use ‘admin view’ found in the links in the left-hand navigation which provides two additional wall filters, most recent and hidden posts. The ‘most recent’ wall filter will give you a chronological view of all posts on the page, however visitors to the Page will see posts sorted by relevance.

7. Page Interaction Identity

Another cool feature, gives you the option to interact and moderate your Page as either you or your Page. Prior to the change, Pages automatically interacted on the wall of the Page as the Page and this continues to be the default setting. But now you can interact on your Page as you if you’d like. This can be extremely useful for companies who have recognizable people as part of their brand.

This feature can be found in the settings of the Page under posting preferences.

8. No More Tabs

Tabs are gone. Poof, they disappeared and were replaced by a left navigation similar to what is seen on the new Facebook Profile layout. Just like there was room for six tabs to be displayed across the top of the page with additional tabs hidden under a drop down, there is now room for six links displayed below the Page’s avatar with additional links hidden under a dropdown menu. Each of these links corresponds to what used to be a tab.

If you upgraded your Page and freaked out because the custom tabs you spent an eternity building are missing, you can find them amongst these links and they look cleaner!

9. Page Relationships

Facebook Pages used to have a section below the Page avatar that showcased the Facebook users who liked the Page with specific mention of the visiting user’s friends who liked the Page.

Facebook Pages now give a simple count of the total number of users who like a Page and showcases the other Pages that a Page likes instead of users who like the Page.

10. No More FBML

Don’t panic! You can still create custom Pages (tabs) within your Facebook Page with all of the coolness they’ve always had. You’re just going to have to do it without FBML.

Facebook is retiring the Facebook markup language (FBML) as of March 11, 2011 and replacing it with iFrames. Creating new FBML apps and Pages will no longer be an option. Existing apps and Pages using FBML or the Static FBML app will continue to work, but we recommend transitioning to iFrames to ensure there is no disruption on your Page.

Make sure to go over your custom pages (tabs), apps, and landing pages and get them updated. You can read more about iFrames at the Facebook Developer Blog.

Are you suffering from social media overload? Too many choices? Too much to keep up with? Just too much? Yeah, we get that a lot but there is a solution and it starts with the usual suspects; data and a plan!

Who Cares?
First things first, who cares about your product or service? Who is your target audience?

You know your business best and you know what kind of people might be interested in your products or services. You’ve probably been collecting data on purchases and even if you haven’t gone that far, you can probably put together a profile of characteristics and interests that match your target audience.

Once you’ve got the target audience pinpointed you can figure out where they might be hanging out online. There is a plethora of social media sites out there ranging from large networks that everyone participates in, i.e. Facebook to smaller niche networks for specific interests, think FatSecret.com.

Your task is to figure out where your audience is hanging out and involve yourself in the conversation on that network.

How Do You Find The Conversation?

There are several different ways to find relevant conversations that you can involve yourself in to start building relationships on social networking sites. You can use social media monitoring tools to gather data about conversations already happening about your brand, product, or service and identify the networks that have a high volume of relevant conversation. There are many tools that can help you gather this data.

Basically you’re looking for a social media monitoring apparatus that will let you search for relevant keywords across multiple platforms. These tools range in price from free to thousands of dollars on a monthly subscription. Once you’ve exhausted all of the free options you may want to seek help from a social media agency who’s already subscribing to some of the more expensive enterprise tools that you may not have the budget for.

What If There Is No Conversation?

If you find there is no conversation centered on your brand, product, or service look for opportunities to start the conversation. Now that you know who is interested in your stuff, participate in the conversations that are happening and look for opportunities to add value that is relevant to your business. Answer questions, suggest solutions to problems, and provide interesting and engaging content.

Be cautious not to impose on other conversations and spend the time to build rapport with others. The conversations will spark.

What If The Conversation Spans Multiple Networks?

No one ever said you had to choose one and only one network to get involved with. You can participate in as many conversations as you can keep up with.

Keeping in mind that interaction and a high frequency of targeted, relevant activity is necessary to be successful in social media marketing. Not to mention, every social network has a different atmosphere, requiring a different content. Make sure you have enough resources to allocate to keeping up with all of the conversations with which you choose to engage.

Create A Plan

Now that you’ve identified the networks that make sense for your business and you’ve started to participate in the conversation it’s time to draft a plan of action to get what you want out of social media marketing.

Draft your goals and strategy, collect data, analyze data, and use it to continuously adjust your plan as you continue to your social media journey.

Campaigns running on Google’s Display Network often get a bad reputation for being difficult to control. Long-standing issues like the absence of tools that provide sufficient bid data and the inability to know where exactly your ads may show are just a couple of reasons advertisers tend to shy away from these types of campaigns.

We all want a return on our ad spend and many advertiser’s will tell you that display campaigns are just too risky, especially contextually targeted display campaigns. Well, times are changing with Google’s new contextual targeting tool.

The tool, still in beta, may already be hiding under your nose in your AdWords account, check under the tools tab.

Keyword strategy is quite different on the Display Network vs. the Search Network. These campaigns target content on the web by keyword themes rather than specific user queries. So it’s important that each of your ad groups consists of only a few very tightly themed keywords that all work together to tell Google exactly what kind of content you want to target.

Many advertisers just use the keywords they are already targeting in their search campaigns to target display. This can be dangerous and spendy as it’s easy to get carried away with too many keywords per ad group and then the theme evaporates leaving your ad to flounder around the net showing too often next to irrelevant content or not show as often as it should because Google’s confused. The contextual targeting tool gives you the ad groups based on your topic. These ad group suggestions come straight from the horse’s mouth folks. Google thinks these keywords go together and make up a single theme that Google understands and can use to find relevant content that matches the content you want to target.

One of the things I love most about this tool is that it also provides suggested bid information alongside the suggested ad groups. Yay! No more magical bids pulled from thin air to start contextual campaigns. We have a source of data prior to launch and if you think this is good, you’ll love the sneak peak at potential placements!

That’s right; you can click on each suggested ad group to see a list of placements where your ads may show and not just the domains, the specific URL’s! You can now find sites that aren’t appropriate and exclude them prior to spending a single cent running a blind contextually targeted campaign.

Contextually targeted campaigns aren’t so scary after all, are they? Thanks, Google!

A guy walks into an airport bar and asks the bartender if he can just take a look at the phone.  ”You don’t want to make a call?”  ”Nope, just want to look at the phone.”  I know it sounds like the beginning of one, but this is not a joke, and I actually did this a while back.  Why?  Well, I needed to call Southwest Airlines to reschedule a flight – and I knew the number was 1-800 -I-FLY-SWA.  Which is great, except for the fact that at the time, I didn’t know how to figure out what numbers all those letters mapped to, and I was staring at a Blackberry dialpad full of numbers – not a letter in sight.

Fast forward a few years…

I spend a fair amount of time on airplanes, and every once in a while a past occupant of the seat I happen to be in leaves something interesting to look at between the all-electronics-better-be-off phase until 10,000 feet.  Recently, I picked up a copy of the in-flight duty free magazine and found this little gem:

See what’s going on here?  The person who scribbled this out on the in-flight magazine was desperately trying to figure out what the phone number for Macy’s shop by phone service was.  Yes, they knew it was “1-800-45-MACYS”, but without a phone that actually *has* the letters over the numbers of the dial pad, that phone number is pretty useless.  This person actually drew out a telephone dial pad and tried to put the letters where they thought they should be…and incorrectly at that (the “ABC” starts over the “2″, not the “1″).

Alphanumeric phone numbers are great in 30 second TV spots or 60 second radio ads – they’re easier to remember than a string of numbers, and since the ad will likely be over by the time you reach the telephone, these are helpful for getting the phone call response to the ad itself.  But if you’ve ever tried to actually call one, well, we all have to admit alphanumerics are just plain harder to dial than numbers.

The web is a different animal

If you’re looking at an ad or a website that entices you to call a phone number, it doesn’t just “end” after a matter of seconds.  You don’t have to engrain an alphanumeric phone number into someone’s head with a catchy jingle, because odds are they’re going to punch those numbers into the phone while those numbers are right in front of them…and it will be easier for them to dial without having to look for letters.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of abandoning alphanumeric phone numbers for your online marketing pursuits is that you can use either dedicated phone numbers or pools of phone numbers to track the performance of virtually any advertising campaigns you use to drive traffic or phone leads.  If a goal of your website or your online marketing strategy is to get your phone ringing, then you need to be able to source an offline conversion (like a phone call) back to the click, the ad, the keyword, the email, the site, the content, the version, or the campaign in order to focus your advertising dollars on profitable advertising efforts with measurable ROI.

Many phone tracking solutions out there integrate directly with your web analytics solution.  One very nice solution is Mongoose Metrics, which integrates with Google Analytics, Yahoo! Web Analytics, Omniture SiteCatalyst, WebTrends, Coremetrics, Unica, and more.  You can even use phone tracking with your conversion testing strategy – here’s a case study from a while back showing an integration between a phone tracking solution and Google Website Optimizer.

Summing it all up

Those easy-to-remember alphanumeric phone numbers do have their place, and they can provide some really nice advantages, especially in the offline world.  But online, not having to rely on a single, hard to dial number lets us gain so much from a measurability standpoint that you might want to think about leaving your alphanumerics off of your online initiatives.

So back to the in-flight magazine scribbles… even if Macy’s did eventually get that phone call, I’ll bet they’ll never know what ad campaign was responsible for it!

By the way, if YOU were the one who drew that picture in the airplane magazine, I’d love to hear from you in the comments ;-)