NFL thinks outside the box with New Jersey Super Bowl in 2014

Reporting from Irving, Texas -- NFL owners, historically resistant to change, bundled up Tuesday and took a step into the great wide open.

At the annual May meetings, they voted to award a Super Bowl to the New York area, sending the February 2014 game there and turning back bids by Tampa and South Florida. It was a historic moment because there has never been an outdoor Super Bowl in a cold-weather city. The game will be played at the soon-to-open, $1.6-billion home of the Giants and Jets in East Rutherford, N.J.

"We wished for it, we got it, and now we've got to do the work," said Giants co-owner Steve Tisch, after waiting nervously through four ballots, with the New York-New Jersey bid finally edging Tampa by a simple majority. South Florida, which just played host to the Super Bowl, was eliminated after the second round.

In a larger sense, the league's willingness to try something new — a risk not everyone agrees with — is reflective of Commissioner Roger Goodell's push to be innovative in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Consider some of the changes that have taken place since Goodell took over for Paul Tagliabue in 2006. The Pro Bowl was rescheduled for the Sunday before the Super Bowl to give that all-star game more exposure. Overtime has been changed for the postseason, increasing the likelihood that both teams will have a possession in the extra period. There's a very realistic possibility that two meaningless exhibition games will be replaced by regular-season games. Division rivalries have been pushed to the end of the season to give teams incentive to play hard all the way through their schedules.

The draft has been moved to prime time and is now stretched over three days. The scouting combine has become a made-for-TV event. International games are a staple of the regular season. The league has put a renewed emphasis on player conduct and concussion studies. The umpire has been moved from the defensive to offensive side of the ball to protect him. Hand-held devices soon will be commonplace in stadiums to keep fans apprised of games around the league.

Goodell is not directly responsible for all of these things — he didn't have a vote on the rules changes or location of the Super Bowl, for instance — but league insiders say he is relentless when it comes to pushing the envelope to best position the league and maximize revenue streams. That's vital for a game that's going to have an increasingly difficult time coaxing fans off their couches and into stadiums.

"I feel very strongly that we cannot be complacent in what we do," Goodell said. "We have to continue to find ways to grow the game, to reach new fans, to continue to provide quality. That's what the NFL represents.

"So innovation is a big part of our initiative, whether it's the Super Bowl in New York, the changes we've made to the draft, or changes we've made to the Pro Bowl, we're going to try to find new ways to reach our fans and to make sure we're bringing them the highest quality entertainment."

Tisch called that one of the "signatures" of Goodell's young tenure as commissioner.

"There are a lot of people who are going to be fighting for that dollar that's going to be spent on sports and entertainment," Tisch said. "You've got to take some chances. The public wants to see something new."

OT rule tabled

Owners tabled the discussion of expanding the new postseason overtime rules to the regular season. There was strong momentum among many people in the NFL to do that in March, when the playoff rules were put in place, but for the moment that has dwindled. There will be no such changes to regular-season games this fall.

Roethlisberger talk

Goodell said he will issue a decision "within the next week or so" about when Pittsburgh's Ben Roethlisberger can rejoin the Steelers. The quarterback has been suspended for the first six games of the season for violating the league's personal-conduct policy, and the commissioner hasn't allowed him to participate in team activities, pending evaluations.

L.A. stadium talk

Although it's very preliminary, the concept of a stadium in downtown Los Angeles next to Staples Center gets a thumbs up from Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. He called the plan's backers, businessmen Casey Wasserman and Tim Leiweke, "so credible and so substantive" and said the idea "makes a lot of sense for downtown Los Angeles." That said, the City of Industry stadium proposal is at least a year ahead of that and has the significant advantage of all the necessary land entitlements.

By Sam Farmer

5 Keys to Integrating Search and Social Media Marketing Campaigns

By Avelyn Austin And Renée Revetta
The relationship between search engine optimization (SEO) and social media can no longer be ignored. Integrating your SEO efforts with social media marketing can be accomplished by sharing links and, ultimately, using social profiles to attain higher organic rankings. Here are five keys to integrating your search and social media marketing campaigns:

 

Key 1: Know the basics of how search engines work.

Search engines use robots to scour the web, collecting data as they move through websites via links. The robots then pass that information to indexing servers, where it’s processed and ranked. Two main ranking elements for SEO are content and inbound links.

 

Key 2: Understand how social media affects SEO.

As consumers continue to demand the freshest news and content, search engines will incorporate more social media updates within organic search engine results. These updates currently appear at the bottom of the first results page as “Results from people in your social circle for … [your query].” Searchers can see content from individuals they're connected with via social networks. Additionally, search engines will soon likely integrate public Facebook updates into results pages, and already do so for more open networks like Twitter.

 

Key 3: Determine which social profiles your company needs.

Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have generally been accepted as the most popular social sites across industries. However, for SEO, creating a corporate Google Profile and Buzz profile is increasingly important with the impending release of "caffeine," the new Google search algorithm. Your company should also create a YouTube channel and Flickr account for multimedia content — but try to also host that content on your own website.

 

Key 4: Learn to monitor social media efficiently.

Programs like TweetDeck, HootSuite and Seesmic make sharing content and links across Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook simpler. To monitor networks for inbound linking opportunities and reputation management, search columns for keywords or hashtags are extremely helpful. Additional monitoring can be done through Twitter Search and TweetBeep, while an overall online presence can be surveyed with tools like Trackur, Google Alerts or SocialMention.

 

Key 5: Use social media to increase organic rankings.

With social profiles created, your company's site listing should appear on the first page of results for branded queries, along with your company’s Twitter account, Facebook page and other social profiles — ultimately allowing your company to dominate the first page of branded results. Finally, social media profiles will allow you to quickly distribute content to more individuals, who in turn may create additional inbound links, increasing link popularity.

 

BusinessWeek’s B.L. Ochman said it best in a blog post last year: “For companies, resistance to social media is futile. Millions of people are creating content for the social web. Your competitors are already there. Your customers have been there for a long time. If your business isn’t putting itself out there, it ought to be.” At minimum, companies who wish to have a comprehensive SEO campaign should do the following:

• choose keywords wisely;
• add keywords to website content;
• engage in quality link-building efforts; and
• engage in social media by creating a corporate blog and Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Buzz profiles.

Visit for SEM Programs.

Salesforce.com: Chatter Overview Demo Video

5 Steps to Build a Twitter Marketing Strategy

By Lee Odden

So you want to succeed with Twitter eh? Before you run off and chase shiny butterflies and little blue birds, take a seat and collect yourself. Then read the following tips on creating a potential Twitter marketing strategy that will help you become more productive and successful using Twitter for business.

 First things first. Who are you trying to connect with?

1. Describe your target audience on Twitter. If you’re not an active participant on Twitter, then research. Do the homework and write it down, including Twitter handles of actual target users. If you’ve been able to go so far as develop a persona that represents your customers that spend time on Twitter or social media sites in general, that’s even better.

 The first step in scoring is knowing all about the goal.

2. What outcomes are expected from Twitter participation? Besides being able to say you have 50,000 followers, of course. Incidentally, we experiment with Twitter accounts and those that have a substantial number of followers do not always result in the the most retweets and web site visits. This is important in the fans/friends/followers game. It’s not how many connections you have, it’s who you’re connected with that determines the propagation of tweets, spread of links, traffic, etc.

It’s essential to know how success with Twitter will be measured. If it’s just follower counts, heck those could probably be purchased. (Which TopRankMarketing does NOT recommend) However, that would be a fake network without effect.

Where does Twitter fit in?

3. Where does Twitter fit within your overall online marketing strategy? Is Twitter meant to be a customer service tool? Brand monitoring? Monitoring for sales opportunities? Promotion of other corporate social activities? (ie blogging, Facebook, YouTube, Etc) Does it support some other communications function?

 As a communications and social networking tool, Twitter can connect with customers, prospects, journalists, employees, candidates, investors and marketing partners. Understanding where Twitter fits within the overall mix of online marketing and communications will help with: allocating monitoring and engagement resources, establishing a working social media policy, workflow management and reporting. You may very well find a number of synergies available through Twitter, such as connecting with journalists and bloggers for PR purposes but also encouraging link usage when citing the company to assist with SEO efforts.

Twitter is a tool and only as useful as the tactics you use.

4. A firm grasp of the first three steps really needs to be addressed before useful tactics should be implemented. If all you do is focus on Twitter popularity tactics without addressing a plan for reaching other goals (hopefully being popular isn’t the sole goal) then the investment in time and effort becomes more like guesswork.

First and foremost for tactics, the Twitter page needs to be designed and optimized. If a business has the expectation to be perceived in a significant way, then the Twitter page needs to avoid looking insignificant. Tweets need to be diverse, yet follow a theme that is consistent to the messaging and audience goal. Kudos to customers and offering tips are great but alone are not going to attract followers fast.

There are a few tactics with Twitter that are almost always a good idea regardless of the audience, goals and overall plan:

• Having a persona or target profile in mind, research Twitter users and follow them.
• Associate the Twitter account with something else that is social, such as a YouTube Channel, Facebook Fan Page and/or a blog.
• Make an effort to link to a small number of high quality and creatively written resources, daily. Mornings are best. Brand these with a hashtag like #yourbrandtips, where “yourbrand” is the brand within your company that this Twitter account is focused on. It could also be a behavior or action. Ex: #niketips or #runningtips.
• Schedule a #yourbrandtips Twitter event every month, two weeks or weekly. This would be run like #blogchat where a real person from your company hosts a chat on Twitter about survey topics. Ideally there would be influential guests involved so that their tweets attract new followers to your brand’s Twitter account. The company should really post their twitter handle everywhere their web site address is posted.
• Find a way to ask followers questions, then use those answers in blog posts, which are promoted via the business twitter account.
• Create a Twitter list of a segment of the target audience. One list for each segment. Then solicit followers asking for recommendations of people that belong in the “segment one” list or “segment two” list. Ex: ”librarians” or “network administrators”. Mention that anyone who retweets a link to the list can get added to that list – provided they belong. Lists must be relevant and managed to be of any use. Promote lists with Listorious.com.
• Use #FollowFridays or #FF to recognize people that retweet the brand’s Twitter content the most. Also mention influential Twitter accounts that you have had some connection with. They might retweet the #FF and expose the brand Twitter account to new audiences.

Measure twice, Tweet once.

5. Measurement with Twitter can be tricky such as identifying referrers via various URL shortening services, but it’s the most important. By “measurement”, I also mean monitoring on an ongoing basis, not just counting outcomes or KPIs. Followers is just one dimension. Based on what the brand is trying to achieve, a mix of data points and measurement tools should be implemented. Some example metrics:

• Tweets published
• Retweets & potential reach from those retweets
• New targeted Twitter users that are followed by the brand’s Twitter account
• New followers of the brand’s Twitter account acquired
• Direct traffic from Twitter to brand’s web pages. URL shortening services should be used like bit.ly
• Mentions of the brand in Tweets without links
• How many lists the brand Twitter account is included in
• What new Twitter users has the brand’s Twitter account added to it’s own organized lists?
• How many engagements or discussions the brand’s Twitter account has with other users
• Connections (follow, retweet, @message, DM) with targeted Twitter users

Example Tools:

• search.twitter.com
• social media monitoring like socialmention.com, trackur.com, scoutlabs, Techrigy SM2, Radian6
• Web analytics
• bit.ly
• cotweet.com, hootsuite.com, tweetdeck.com

Obviously, there are many other tools for Twitter out there, including overall social media marketing campaign management tools such as: Wildfire, Objective Marketer, Spredfast, SocialTalk, pop.to and others.

Sure, you can “experiment” with tools like Twitter and find your specific strategy as you go, but you could also find productivity and valuable connections a lot sooner (as well as effective time and resource management) if you create a plan that addresses who you’re trying to reach on Twitter, what goals you hope to achieve and a plan for getting there. Make no mistake, there will always be a component of on-demand and real time or opportunistic marketing with Twitter. The platform is still so new that the community is finding new and innovative uses every day. You might find new uses too, so don’t get too committed to a single focus in your Twitter efforts. Be flexible, curious and willing to participate.

Some tactics are always a good idea and some will reveal themselves as you develop your Twitter network and participate with the community. Measuring success on Twitter has everything to do with goals, so make sure you’ve spent at least a little time figuring out where Twitter fits in with your overall online marketing strategy and then what tools make the most sense to use when measuring success.