In the age of user-generated and user-submitted content, how do you determine what’s legally protected and what’s OK to share or re-purpose?

Although this question might not be top-of-mind when you’re starting a new project, it’s an important consideration in today’s content! content! content! marketing scene. Since legal isn’t really my thing, I sought out the expertise of someone who works in marketing at a local law firm. And since blogging isn’t really her thing, here’s a quick summary of the conversation.
The number one thing I took away from our discussion is that not considering legal implications for your online content can be very risky.

What you decide to protect and what you decide to share are critical factors in protecting and promoting your brand. How do you decide where to draw the line? Consider a proactive approach and attempt to answer these questions in order to determine the level of brand access to give to the user:

• Ideally, what role does the user play?
• What are the essential tools the user needs in  order to participate?
• How active is the user currently with the  brand?
• What is the motivation of the user in this  initiative? What gets the user interested?
• What is the expectation of the user? What  does the user hope to accomplish by participating?

At the most simplistic level, determining what to legally protect and what to share starts with audience analysis. As user-generated content becomes more effective in marketing initiatives, what to share / what to protect will become an essential part of brand strategy.

Is it more exciting to spend more time on how to get and use user-generated content? If you ask this marketer, the answer is yes. However, if you don’t devote time to building a strategy around what content is protected, you may find that your users will make that decision for you. Eek.

We are lucky to have so many knowledgeable and friendly Online Marketers here in Minnesota and Ward Tongen is a perfect example. I am pleased to introduce Ward to you in this interview which is our latest in our Meet the MIMA Members Interview Series.

Q: As Senior Online Marketing Analyst with Medtronic, what are your responsibilities?

Ward: I like to think of myself as an online marketer that saves lives.

Medtronic produces state-of-the-art medical devices and Medtronic employees worldwide share a common goal – to “alleviate pain, restore health, and extend life”. Every 5 seconds, the life of someone somewhere in the world is improved by a Medtronic product or therapy. As a search marketer I help Medtronic strategically place our product and therapy information in front of people searching online for healthcare information.

My primary responsibilities include ‘evangelizing’ the value of search marketing and web metrics/analytics to the marketers at Medtronic. I’m attached to a very talented group of people. We act as an internal interactive agency to the various Medtronic business units.

Q: How can a large company’s (such as Medtronic) approach to search be similar and different than a small mom and pop’s?

Ward: Small entrepreneurs can be quick and nimble in the online market place. Medtronic is a very large medical device manufacturer. So we develop systems and processes to help us react more quickly to online marketing opportunities. Medtronic operates in a highly regulated environment, so our content faces extra steps and much scrutiny before it is allowed to be published. This sometimes affects what we can and cannot do with regard to search marketing. It’s tough environment for SEO.

Q: You do a fair amount of speaking about search marketing at conferences and with private groups, are there any differences between preparing and speaking for a private group vs larger and more general audiences of a conference? What is your favorite part of speaking?

Ward: Yes. My professional speaking developed in just the last few years. It started out when Jimmy Poole invited me to speak to the James J. Hill Library staff on the topic of search marketing. That experience gave me the confidence to step up and do more. Since then I have been fortunate enough to be invited to speak at the MIMA Summit and several Search Engine Strategies Conferences among others.

I find that with the smaller niche audiences I can tailor my presentation to be more audience-focused. This is harder to do with a larger, more general audience.

I am very passionate about what I do so the favorite part of speaking for me is when someone gets to that “Aha!” moment – when they find insight into the paradigm shift that search marketing represents.

Q: What do you think of Google’s Universal Search and how do you think it will evolve? How can a search marketer take advantage of it?

Ward: Basically, Google is trying to read your mind, and they are getting better and better at it. Google’s Universal Search is a landmark step in that direction. Search marketers and savvy Web surfers know lots of techniques to get relevant results from the search engines.

However, your average searcher needs assistance making the most out of their queries without getting overwhelmed with the number of different search indexes available on Google.

At first glance it would seem that this new interface could potentially reduce traffic to the Web page index as other indexes get more real estate on the search engine results page. This isn’t necessarily bad for search marketers. Now, instead of having all their eggs in one basket, search marketers have a greater opportunity to extend their reach and relevancy into image, blog, video search, etc. The long-term value of well-written content in the vernacular of your target audience may very well increase.

Q: How long have you been a member of MIMA and what are the beneficial aspects of being a member for you?

Ward: I’ve been a member of MIMA for about five years I think. I remember earlier on, I was a bit of a wall flower at the social functions, but I soon got to know a few people and things warmed up quickly after that. Now networking at MIMA is a permanent part of my professional development. MIMA functions are now full of familiar faces. The speakers they get are usually dynamic and the venues MIMA selects are outstanding. I often encourage people to join.

Q: Music, sport or passion: What do you like to do, read or listen to when away from work?

Ward: My tastes in music are eclectic. I enjoy a good hard science fiction novel. I love Asia, especially Thailand. Like many others I share some of these topics on the social networking sites such as iLike, Flikr, Facebook, etc.

I also collect what I call “National Geographic moments”. Moments like my first glimpse of Edinburgh Castle, an early morning visit to the Tsukiji Fish market in Tokyo, a night dive with manta rays in Hawaii. Bertrand Piccard once said “Life is not governed by chance but by encounters.”

Most people are surprised to hear that I was also formerly a geologist. I still have an appreciation for unusual or rare rock and mineral specimens.

Q: Do you have a tip or a couple of your favorite search marketing resources you would like to share with the MIMA folks?

Ward: I highly recommend Rand Fishkin’s SEO Tools on SEOmoz.org. I use quite a few of the Firefox search tool extensions. Also, we have started to use the foreign language datasets in Keyword Discovery.

My tip – Leverage online web metrics to provide business insight to your clients. This will logically lead them to develop search marketing opportunities.

Thanks Ward!

I’m happy to introduce Ivan Nuñez of The Nancekivell Group for our next MIMA member interview. Ivan and the rest of the folks at The Nancekivell Group work with an exciting range of clients. I hope you enjoy “meeting” Ivan in this interview and leave a comment introducing yourself and saying hi!

Q: Tell us about The Nancekivell Group where you work. What type of businesses make up it’s client base and what services does The Nancekivell Group provide?

A: The Nancekivell Group specializes in strategic marketing communications. The company has 25 years of broad business experience providing services to clients of all sizes, from Fortune 500 corporations to non-profit organizations.

Current active accounts include Possis, St. Jude Medical, 3M, Best Buy, Cargill, Artic Cat, amongst others.

We provide services in:

• Corporate brand strategy and communications (Research and Competitive Analysis, Strategy and Positioning, Naming and Identity Systems Design, Brand Launch Programs, etc.)
• Marketing communications (Strategic planning, Message development and positioning statements, Employee communications and recruitment materials, Capabilities materials, etc.)
• Investor communications (Annual reports, online Annual reports, Investor presentations, Shareholder meeting materials, etc.)
• Interactive solutions (Web Site Strategy and Design, Intranets, Extranets, Web Applications, E-newsletters, etc.)

(more…)

I’m pleased to bring you an interview with Nina Hale of Nina Hale Consulting, Inc. Her agency for strategic internet marketing is located in Minneapolis and she has done work for many fine organizations including Hazelden Foundation, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, and Stratasys / RedEye RPM. Thank you Nina for sharing your time and expertise.

I had been working steadily towards the goal of starting my own internet marketing agency for a number of years. As you move up the ladder, you become more removed from the work you love and more into employee management, or if you’re in an agency, you get pushed into sales. I like hands-on marketing and that’s my lifetime work.

I love working with clients, and learning their marketing and product challenges. I absolutely love it when I can come in and change some behaviors that have an immediate impact in revenue or cost reduction (who wouldn’t?!). The most challenging part is working with the constant issues of time restraints, which often is harder to overcome than the financial constraints. Everyone is so overloaded these days, it’s always hard for clients to be able to have the time to focus on everything they need/want to do.

I love long-term client relationships, but my goal is always to get to a point of proving enough of an ROI and growth in the business for the client to hire internally. People get a surprise when I say my goal is for them to fire me.

You have to get to the real metrics of which online channels are delivering revenue, not traffic. It can be very discomfiting to pull away from a channel that outwardly seems to be a great source of leads. But you have to follow it all the way down to final revenue and make your decisions based upon that, and that’s often hard to track.

I also find that one of the most common issues is determining which tactics are right for a client. Marketing is not a cookie-cutter business, and everyone’s business is unique, even within industries. While some tactics, like search or email are in almost all plans, there are also times when you want to exhaust all other channels before turning to SEO or PPC. For example, products with latent demand – customers would love it, but don’t search for it directly, so if you do use search, you have to develop it around the category, not the product.

The most rewarding part is when we develop a tight strategy and stick to it. When you do that, then you can be very rigorous on qualifying new tactics and staying focused.

This is a fascinating idea, and I’m studying it seriously for some clients. This is another great form of disintermediation that Google is getting into, but also supports their goal of building their user base by providing successful web experiences, because they will rank good converters higher.

Aggregators like Lending Tree, Search for Colleges, etc., have made enormous amounts of money in this space and I love the idea of putting some of that power back into client’s hands. Of course, the aggregators will also love it! I think it will be most successful overall in fragmented industries.

I have a few clients where SMO is a big part of our brand and loyalty efforts, and it supports the popular idea of having your audience build the brand for you. SMO isn’t right for everyone, but can be very powerful for some. Like many online strategies, you have to see it as a split objective – many started it to build link strength for SEO, but all SEO efforts should be based upon spreading your brand to the right audience and providing a good web experience for people.

Generally I feel you have to answer the big issues first – is your site converting visitors? Do you have a strong relationship email program? Can people find you on a search engine? But certainly there are pockets who don’t use email anymore, and we know that people often trust unknown individual’s recommendations above marketing efforts.

Never underestimate the power of having some quiet time with your numbers in an excel file; most of my ‘ah-ha’ moments have come from quality time with excel.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project is a great free resource. There are a huge amount of free or inexpensive webinars out there. I actively subscribe to ClickZ, eMarketer, Marketing Profs, Marketing Sherpa, and a host of others I read less frequently. Google Analytics is an amazing free analytics program that can take you a good way before you invest in more advanced analytics. Unless you have someone who can dedicate a lot of time to analytics, you should seriously consider whether to spend the money on expensive tools.

My biggest recommendation is always to try to think like the customer – who is she, what does she want, how does she communicate, and what matters to her?

MiMA is a fantastic networking group, and brings in great speakers. It is vital for anyone who is serious about internet marketing in the Twin Cities to belong to MiMA. Their summit last year was brilliant and cost a fraction of huge and sometimes wretched conferences.

My husband, Dylan Hicks, is a former musician and a professional music critic and writer. My new employee, Keith Patterson, is a professional musician and well-known mod encyclopedia. Music is a big part of my life. At work, I often listen to international music so the lyrics don’t distract me, right now I’m on an African music kick. I am also on the board of the Minnesota Planetarium and Space Discovery Center.

I am an avid reader, don’t watch TV, and have a serous interest in obscenely expensive shoes. I ride a clunky old cruiser bicycle, a gorgeous Ducati motorcycle and will be getting a gorgeous Royal Enfield motorcycle next month. But the best thing in the world is playing board games with my 6-year old son and husband. People sometimes don’t believe it when I say I am a shy workaholic nerd, but that’s the real me.

Thanks Nina!

First off I should introduce myself. My name is Chris Dohman, I am a MIMA member and a new blogger here with the MIMA blog. Courtney Lind, our blog editor here at MIMA, heard about my idea to interview MIMA members in order for MIMA members to meet and get to know more MIMA members. Courtney and the MIMA Board of Directors liked the idea and invited me to bring it here to the MIMA blog and I happily accepted. Thanks for the invitation to join the blog!

My first interview was with Paul Jahn of LocalMN.com and his LocalMN Blog. You can read the interview with Paul Jahn at the MIMA Search Marketing blog which is a blog that we started for a group of MIMA members that are interested in SEO and search marketing.

Today I’m happy to bring you our next interview, a feature with Nina Hale of NINA Hale Consulting, Inc. Nina shares some great info, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading and I encourage you to leave comments to create some interaction.