The Range Blog » Observations

What Tony Hsieh Didn’t Say About Social Media

J.Blake Martin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:16:46 +0000

Zappos is about culture. It is a company that is completely, totally, 100% invested in its culture. They want their people to want to be there. To be actively engaged. They even offer new employees $2,000 to quit during training.

Let that sink in. After you’ve made it through several rounds of interviews (half of them evaluating your resume, the other half evaluating your cultural fit), they offer $2,000 to give you one last chance to jump ship. They’ll even pay the full salary of the five week training period if you quit before it ends.

The people who work at Zappos WANT to be there. The Zappos you see is the genuine Zappos.

Tony Hsieh, founder and CEO of Zappos, is more comfortable talking “culture” than “social media” (he doesn’t even like the term “social media”). In the online marketing world, we love Zappos because it’s a social media darling – one of a handful of firms to run a blockbuster social campaign. We look at them for clues on how to run our own successful campaigns. In fact, that’s the primary reason I attended the DMNews Marketer of the Month interview with Tony this past Monday.

But Tony wasn’t there to share his social media marketing wisdom. He didn’t specifically point to the answer and say, “This is why Zappos is able Tweet effectively…” but he gave us a big clue.

The clue is culture.

Tony’s top three priorities for the company are:
1. Culture
2. Customer Service
3. Clothing

The product, or “what it does,” is third on the list. Can you say that about your company? Should everyone be able to say that about their companies? Is it a good business model? Is it a better business model?
It’s a model that works well for social marketing.

I feel like it’s becoming cliché to say it, but social media isn’t what you do, it’s who you are. Your company is a profile in the online world. Nobody wants to be friends with a company. Nobody wants to be a fan of a company. People gravitate to personality. They want to associate themselves with people and things on the internet that reflect their own values.

You can have that kind of relationship with Zappos. The clue is culture. That might not be the explanation for every successful social media campaign, but it sure works for Zappos.

What Tony Hsieh Said About Social Media

J.Blake Martin — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:13:59 +0000

When I first heard of Zappos.com a couple of years ago, it was in reference to Twitter. Here was this crazy CEO worth a billion dollars sending out frequent and personal tweets about his own life, inviting people to spur-of-the-moment happy hours in New York City, and not once mentioning a special deal or discount. SearchEngineWatch has a nice article about it here.

What has been the reaction? People love it. They eat it up. Zappos.com has some of the most avid corporate groupies in the social media space. So I paid close attention when Tony Hsieh, founder and CEO of Zappos, was recently asked the question, “Other than Twitter, what are you currently doing from a social media perspective?”

His answer sounded disappointed, almost offended. “I don’t like the term ‘social media.’” To Tony, his company’s Twitter account is a reflection of the company culture. He never had to force it. He didn’t consider the ROI and pronounce the program “worthy of investment.” It was just something that made sense. Zappos was the type of company that had a Twitter-type relationship with its customers.

This point received further clarification in his response to the follow up question about company guidelines and policies around Twitter.

“Be real. Use your best judgment.”

Tony doesn’t try to mandate some form of corporate PR quality control, he just lets the employees be themselves. He hires the right people for his company and he lets them be themselves.

How novel.

And how frightening.

But if we’re going to keep moving forward as marketers in the present age, we’re going to have to learn to be comfortable around novel things. And we’re going to have to get used to being frightened.

At least we can take solace in the fact that our most valuable social tool (and Tony agrees with this 100%) is still the good, old-fashioned telephone.

Generation Z? The “Homelanders?”

Sarah Engel — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 21:44:44 +0000

With a toddler in my house and another little one on the way, I can’t help but be fascinated with the differences the newest generation will have from even today’s teenagers. My husband and I laughed he other day that our almost 2-year-old already has full understanding of the iPad and will never comprehend that phones used to be connected to the walls, and not have nice rounded icons that you touch to talk to “Memaw.” In fact, one of his favorite activities, with a new baby brother on the way, is to ask me to show him “laughing babies on YouTube.” (Have I created a monster?!)

So, it was with interest that I read this article by AP writer Martha Irvine about the youngest up-and-coming generation. Referred to as Generation Z or the “Homelanders” by various researchers, this is a group of kids who fully understand the technology we are only beginning to embrace, are free thinking by nature, and are taking Gen Y’s traits to a whole new level of multi-tasking and acceptance. These kids were raised with an African American president in office, are hearing their parents discuss environmental issues and watching them recycle (at least at our house) and would never… Not ever… Watch a commercial during Dora. (That’s what DVRs are for, and they know no different.)

Now, I’ll need to update this post at some point, because, I’m sorry but “Generation Z” or “The Homelanders” just do not do it for me. We are talking about the most highly technology-evolved generation in history and a group that has full expectations of having their “15 minutes of fame.” There has to be a more compelling moniker, and I’m on a mission to find it.

The End Of The World Is Coming! No Wait, Everything Is Fine.

Vic Drabicky — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:58:40 +0000

It was just a little over a year ago when everyone analyzing the luxury retail space turned into Fox news. “Luxury will never be the same!” they shouted. “This is the end of luxury as we know it!”, others echoed. Some even threatened that “no one will ever buy a $1,000 bag again!” (believe it or not, these are all real quotes from some of the “leading” luxury analysts). Sensationalism was at its highest and if everyone didn’t panic and rethink their entire brand, they were going to die. Immediately. But here we are, one year later, and luxury brands are posting profits (huge profits in some cases), consumers are buying handbags worth far more than $1,000 and the same sensationalistic analysts have completely changed their tune.

This isn’t to say that luxury didn’t go through a bit of a rough time, just look at the financial statements for Saks, Neimans, LVMH, or many other luxury brands of the past year, but not one of those companies died nor did they go back and completely reinvent the wheel. Instead, luxury did exactly what every good brand does when times change: they adapted. They cut back on excess inventory, they refined their product offering to focus on items core to their brand and they continued to focus on the customer. Not every brand was as successful as others, but in just the past month, Hermes reported an 8.5% rise in sales year over year (09 v. 08), Burberry share prices have increased faster than any member of the 13-member Bloomberg European Fashion Index (up 29% in the past 6 months) and even Saks, who many thought was on its deathbed, trimmed its 4th quarter losses and is planning to “go on the offensive” in 2010.

I’m not saying that everything is fine and dandy – we still have a lot of progress we need to make before we fully pull out of this recession – but if I start to see the same analysts releasing “Nothing Can Stop Luxury Growth!” articles, I will be forced to treat them the same way I treat Glenn Beck (which something like a cross between completely ignoring him and a running a full out campaign against his entire existence).

Is Google Doing Away with Site Counts?

John Greer — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:38:31 +0000

As Google has been heading down the path of less (or at least, less thorough) public information for non-verified site owners, and conversely more information for verified site owners, they may be taking another step down that path.

Below is the current Google “site:” style search which returns the number of results found – in other words the page count for that site.

Current Google Site: Count

The new 3 column Google interface appears to drop the number of results found when conducting the same type of search.

The New 3-Column Google Interface Site: Count

However, conducting a normal search without the “site:” operator in the new layout, Google still displays the number of total results.

A normal search will still display the number of total results

I may have missed it, but I haven’t seen anyone mention this notable change. This has been a consistent pattern I’ve seen so far, but share your thoughts if you are or are not seeing the same thing.

I’d like to hear from Google on this, as I still consider this search feature useful even today in diagnosing site issues.

Update: Recently, I noticed that Google IS now listing site counts on the new look (although not before our article got a fair number of Sphinns). I’m not sure if this was a change of mind of simply a mistake on Google’s part.

SEO Industry Quick Hits (Nov. 30, 2009)

Kerry Dean — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:05:19 +0000

You may call them quick hits. You may call it scatter shooting. You may just refer to it as news. Regardless, here are some recent developments in our world of search marketing and SEO:

DMOZ 2.0 is on the way in 2010. I don’t know who this blog belongs to, but it seems to have a lot of inside information about the forthcoming, upgraded version DMOZ (aka DMOZ 2.0).
Malcolm Coles has a great write-up on the new Google layout. From the look of things, Local SEO will be crucial for all websites when this layout rolls out to all Google data centers.
Black Friday boasts $595M in U.S. online holiday spending; Up 11% versus a year ago (via comScore)
Some 19% of Americans will use their mobile devices for shopping this holiday season, according to a Deloitte survey.
Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday showed a strong surge in online shopping searches, with searches for “Black Friday” up by more than 20%, year over year.

Enjoy!

Google Caffeine Index Now Live on One Data Center

Kerry Dean — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:06:39 +0000

For anyone who is interested, Matt Cutts has confirmed that the Google Caffeine index is currently accessible on one data center (http://209.85.225.103/). You can go there and check your rankings on the new Caffeine index. However, Matt says that this data center is only returning Caffeine results about 50% of the time. C’mon, Matt. Please make it 100%. We’ve gotta test some keyword rankings. Inquiring clients want to know! :)

Thanks to Barry Schwartz for the update on Caffeine.

18 Days Later: Undead GeoCities Pages Roam the Interwebs

Kerry Dean — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:31:42 +0000

Zombieland was an awesome movie. But what happens when zombies overtake the internet in URL form? Well, I’m not exactly sure what happens. All I can tell you is that 18 days ago Yahoo closed GeoCities. Geocities had a lot of pages. Tens of millions. Maybe a hundred million. I’m not really sure about that either. Now that I think about it, I don’t really know much at all. However, I do know that there are at least 64 GeoCities pages that are not dead. They are undead. Here’s a list I created, sorted alphabetically:

If Yahoo closed GeoCities on October 26, 2009, why are we still seeing GeoCities pages that are live? Are they after our brains? Or could they possibly be persuaded to link to me? Let’s hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

Actually, Yahoo did say that GeoCities Plus accounts would stay active. Thanks to Matt McGee for getting Yahoo to confirm that. But that brings up a really big issue: Google, Yahoo and Bing have removed GeoCities URLs from their respective indices. Does that mean that these GeoCities Plus pages can never show up in the SERPs? If so, do these GeoCities Plus account users feel cheated? First, they have to pay to have their GeoCities pages kept alive. Furthermore, their pages now get less search traffic. I think I would be a little upset, especially if my GeoCities page represented an income for me.

FYI, there is a site called Reocities, which tried to index/salvage as much of GeoCities as possible. The Internet Archive also announced plans to archive as much of GeoCities as possible because they, too, wanted to keep the legacy alive. I applaud the efforts of those sites.

Google Blog Search Results…Still Searching?

John Greer — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:40:12 +0000

“Quick! I need to find a blog about shoes!” How many times have you said that? Dozens of times? Maybe not, but finding an authoritative blog about any number of topics is a common task by searchers today.

A blog would be a logical place to find information on new styles, trends, and up to date information on shoes. Perhaps you are doing research, looking for a contact, or simply trying to add some reading material to your blog reader.

So how does Google blog search stack up in finding authoritative blogs? Not so good. Apparently, it doesn’t quite know how to define a blog, as the example below shoes shows. Journeys, Converse, and all of the others simply aren’t blogs.

Google Blog Search Results for Shoes

This is a particularly bad example, but I’ve tried a variety of searches in the past and often gotten poor results. For now, Technorati may still be the best blog search.

With the push for real-time search integration, it will be interesting to see how well search engines do with identifying real-time sources, like Twitter. Considering the length of time blogs have been around, it may be a while before we see great results.

Our Blog’s First Comment Spam!

Kerry Dean — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:53:52 +0000

Wow! You should grab the baby book because this is an amazing moment. Our blog got hit with its first spam comment – on its second day of existence! Whoever left this spam comment is obviously quick, up-to-date and with it. And as you will see below, this comment spammer is all about Fantasy Football and Final Fantasy.

I am relatively new to the world of blogging, and I made a promise to myself to share much of what I learn in this world of blogging. Now that we have our first comment spam, I figured it would be a great idea to share my knowledge about comment spam.

Comment Spam: Anyone up for some Final Fantasy Football?

It is easy to identify spam comments because they typically have the following elements:

It is completely off-topic from the blog post.
Before this post, our blog had no mentions of Fantasy Football or Final Fantasy.
It has a lot of keywords that are obviously stuffed into the comment.
As you can see, there are a bunch of keywords in this comment. They are stuffed into a grammatically-incorrect statement. And they are separated by commas.
All of the keywords are off-topic from the blog post.
Again, none of the keywords in this comment relate to the blog post.
It has a link in the comment.
This is the tell-tale sign of comment spam: links. Comment spammers use these links to influence search engine rankings. And some comment spammers even use these links as a traffic source.
It has a link in the name.
Why stop with links in the body of the comment when you can also link the name field in the comment?
The email domain is suspicious.
In this case, the comment was obviously a spam comment. I didn’t even really need to investigate the email address. But the email address can be an indicator of spam comments. For this comment, the email is from yandex.ru, the most popular search engine in Russia. It’s like the Yahoo of Russia. Anyone can get a yandex.ru mail account, so this email is not completely suspicious. However, I have seen comments from info@gmail.com, and that is definitely a fake email address.

Now you know about Comment Spam. It’s purpose is to generate links, higher rankings for keywords, and traffic from our blog. The bad news is that people still use this technique for link building. And even worse, they only do it because it works. It’s definitely not something we do or recommend to our clients. Anyways, the point of this blog post is to teach you what to look for. Mission accomplished. Right?