When Dana Todd talks about the future of communication  strategies you can hear a distinct level of comfort in her voice.  It’s the voice of experience.

As a well-known pioneer in the search marketing area, Dana Todd is trailblazing again.

Dana’s recently launched - Newsforce — with a team of heavy-duty overachievers with a mission to expand the communication and monetization offerings of the news industry.

The company is not wasting any time.

Ms. Todd who is the firm’s CMO and co-founder is on a whirlwind tour delivering 100 demonstrations in 100 days sharing her own story about how Newsforce’s storytelling tools will revolutionize the online media industry.  The tool suite is

1.    Self-service search optimization tool for story and press releases
2.    The Newsforce Network

How will Newsforce expand the communication and monetization offerings of the news industry?

According to Ms. Todd, it starts with deconstructing press releases into editorial content so that advertisers can build-in longevity into the distribution of corporate communications.  Ms. Todd noted, “Newsforce’s storytelling media network compliments traditional PR initiatives, media buys and organic search objectives.”   And, according to Ms. Todd your campaign can be up and running in as little as an hour.

I think Newsforce’s storytelling media will also serve to enrich and renew the value of article marketing efforts.  In fact, a storytelling media network is likely to be great matches for the publishing industry as well as authors even if the platform is geared more toward supporting branding than a straight out performance buy.

One thing that is attractive about Newsforce is the simplicity of their model.

The ingredients for making a storytelling campaign are assets and processes that are already being used in the ad and PR industry that have been combined to create a new media offering:

Storytelling media starts with a simple persuasive story. Write for consumers rather than editors.  Create an editorial experience rather than an advertising vehicle.  Then, plug in non-traditional sources of content.  When you’re ready, syndicate your “advertorial story” content across 283 premium news platforms including Yahoo News and Los Angeles Times among many others into a “storyboard” module that appears on these sites.  Optimize content for search indexing.  Enable your content for social network distribution via tagging.  Set your budget.  Now sit back and measure the results.

And the results are compelling.

Eye tracking engagement studies have proven the Newsforce storyboard unit is nearly 3 times more effective at capturing attention over Google Adwords units and 8 to 12 times more effective than banner ads.

The Newsforce storyboard is also redefining our understanding of what an ad unit is online. The offering reminds me of YellowBrix’s content distribution model from 1999 that was based on the integration of contextual ad units into site content.

Newsforce has also productized part of the brand storytelling and constituent relations processes developed by storyteller practitioners like Michael Margolis of Thirsty-Fish among others.  It will be interesting to see how storyteller practitioners and media product vendors partner to expand revenue opportunities.

Let the storytelling begin.

To learn more about storytelling media opportunities visit Newsforce Network or follow Newsforce on Twitter #newsforce.

PHOTO CREDITS: thewebmama

Developing a consumer database by capturing email addresses during a pre-launch phase for a beta site, product or service release is easy to do and can serve as a spring board for amplifying viral pass along once your service, product or brand is made publicly available.

If you’re looking for a great  example of a beta release site, check out Likaholix “a fun and easy way to share and discuss your likes and discover new ones with people you know.”  It appears as if the company is diving into the “interest + relationship = trusted recommendation” arena.  Very interesting!

So how did Likaholix.com create a great beta release site?  It starts with a pretty simple landing page with a number of well executed elements to capture email addresses.  Note: This  framework can drive a 20% to 40% conversion rate for email capture off traffic to the site.

Here are few key takeaways to consider as you build your beta release site:

1. Prominently position data capture elements. The goal is acquire as many emails as early as possible to support future release goals as well as to gain insight from users. The underlying goal is to make it as easy as possible for visitors to sign up and become registered active users.  Start by making it as easy as possible for people to see how to sign up.  Site visits for early releases are in many cases are friends and family as well as individuals that have a category affinity or interest in a technology or service. Think technology application geeks that want to be the first to try something and, blog about it.

2. Keep data requests to a minimum. In this case, Likaholix is only asking for an email address.  Very smart.

3. Create exclusivity. Likaholix uses “private beta” and presents a relatively small pool of participants with an added “counter” of the number remaining beta accounts remain to drive email submissions.  The call to action - Request Account - is used to reinforce the perceived notion of exclusivity.  Again, very smart.

4. Deliver an activation link in an email communication that is triggered off the submission of an email address. There is always room for upgrades and, in this case I believe Likaholix would benefit by expanding their email communication model to include:

I. A reference to their privacy policy with a link to a privacy policy page. It is on the site but always nice to reinforce this information in the confirmation email.

II. Reinforce the incentive - five Amazon Kindles to drive activation — in the communication and turn it into a data capture vehicle.  Before Seth Godin sold Yoyodyne to Yahoo, he was running one the best email marketing data capture models online.  His Get Rich Click (GRC) framework prompted users for information before they could gain access to other links/contest information. In any event, Likoholix does request additional information - name, screenname and password - when you activate your link.  Again, nicely done.  Small innocuous data elements.  One small step for user, one giant step for Likoholix.

III. Leverage celebrity endorsements.  The activation email doesn’t mention Paul Buchheit or Jason Shellen.  Paul and Jason are Google rock stars and are likely to drive Tweets and blog posts because of the work they did at Google.  This is a missed opportunity to fully leverage the implied technology endorsement!

IV. Humanize the closing by including the name of the founder(s) or community director.  I would encourage Bindu Reddy and Arvind Sundararajan to be people signing email communicating to members of Likaholix community.

V. Add the “if this wasn’t you who requested to use to this cool tool” disclaimer paragraph to inform non-requesters that their email address is not going to be sent to fundraisers but rather that they — the receiver — simply need to act like a couch potato and do nothing because this is the last time they will hear from your great company unless they of course decide to click the activation link.  Problem solved.

5. Include a simple incentive framework to boost conversion off the data capture page. The incentive - the possibility of winning one of five Amazon Kindles - was enhanced by an implied technology endorsement from two super geeks (see above) who are judging the contest.  And, more importantly, a viral marketing campaign (get 10 friends — kind of a mini Moby campaign was integrated into the beta release to stimulate tool usage and viral pass along.  Well done Likaholix!

6.  The link to the Privacy policy is a nice touch.

TAGS: Likoholix, Bindu Reddy, Arvind Sundararajan, Google, beta release, viral marketing, Amazon Kindles, Paul Buchheit, Jason Shellen, Seth Godin,

In May of 2006, I published a research paper with Osterman Research highlighting the challenges brands would face as they embarked on implementing word of mouth marketing campaigns.  The study took 6 months to implement and eventually grew to 54 pages of content.

My goal was to provide organizations interested in, or even intimidated by, word-of-mouth (WOM) campaigns with data and guidance designed to help them integrate this exciting strategy into their marketing and media plans.

The study is titled Perceptions, Practices & Ethics in Word of Mouth Marketing.  And, I’m making it available again.  Is it still relevant?  Well, from a planning standpoint I think the topics are still as relevant today as they were two years ago.

I also turned the release of the study into an example of how to support viral marketing pass along.  The study was downloaded over 150,000 from May 2006 to February 2009.

Here’s how we did it:

1. We started with no marketing budget and decided to use a free e-book framework to drive distribution.
2. We became members of communities to hear what was going on and to gain qualified participants for the survey. This platform also allowed us to announce to relevant communities when the study was available.
3. Created a database. We captured the email addresses, names, and company names of all survey participants. We also included email requests for the survey that were appended to the database. There are 217 records in the database for email requests.
4. We communicated. We thanked individuals for participating.  And, sent them a link to pick up the results.
5. We said something important. The study took 6 months from formulation to publishing and we focused on giving readers valuable and actionable information. The content publishing focus was on tips and techniques.
6. We focused on co-creation. This is an important step. We reached out to 45 industry experts and competitor firms in our industry ten days before we published and, asked them for their feedback and insight. 38 individuals responded, and 17 of those people provided lengthy comments and insight that enhanced the quality of the work and required us to rethink some of the conclusions and rationale. Personally, I’m still thrilled and humbled that competitor firms say that the work is incredibly valuable and comprehensive.
7. We recognized the contributions of those that contributed feedback.  And, even asked some individuals for reviews of the study that we published as Accolades.
8. We did a blogged press release. Having a blog press release really helped to drive distribution.
9. We created a counter so that we could track downloads.
10. We provided links to relevant publishers that cover the WOM industry.
11. We talked about the study at industry events.
12. We commented on comments to be part of the conversation.  Thanking people for reviews gave us more content to reference in the form of lists of people who were talking about the study.  This became blog post content.
13. We shared our success by publishing download counts.
14. We published snippets of content from the study with additional insight on our blog.
15. Once it was added on Wikipedia — we linked to it.  NOTE:  If you feel the study is worth adding back into the Wikipedia article for Word of Mouth or Word of Mouth Marketing, I hope you’ll add it as a resource.

In addition to the 150,000 downloads, I was interviewed for a New York Time article on social media and generated $1.685 million in new business.

TAGS:  Word of mouth, word of mouth marketing, wikipedia, Osterman Research, Audience Machine, content distribution, viral marketing,