I recently presented at Gulf Publishing’s conference “Marketing in the Oilfield” on how energy marketers can leverage online marketing and social media to engage audiences and build their brands. My presentation is embedded below for your viewing pleasure 
For those who want the cliff’s notes, the key takeaways are:
1. Why B2B marketers (including oil and gas / energy service companies) need to be marketing online
2. Roadmap for incorporating online into your existing marketing programs
3. Business case for incorporating social media into an energy marketing program
4. Common social media pitfalls and tips for successfully avoiding them
Here is the presentation. If you can’t view please visit http://bit.ly/2CEUr
I hope you find it to be of value. Please feel free to comment below and share with others!
Steve Latham
http://twitter.com/stevelatham
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I recently posted a question on LinkedIn Answers about the quality of competitive web site data you can find at the free sites like Compete, Alexa and Quantcast. I’ve worked with Quantcast and Compete but I hadn’t heard of Alexa for quite some time (it was quite popular in the early days of the Web, but has not been nearly as visible in recent years). But due to recent events (described below) I had to quickly learn about Alexa so I posted the question to see if others had insights they could share. It didn’t take long until I was overwhelmed with responses. I was surprised by how strongly some felt about the various vendors and thought they would make for an interesting post.
Overall, most feel the info you get from Compete and Quantcast is pretty solid, but not entirely accurate. While it may not be 99% accurate as to the amount of traffic your competitors’ sites are receiving, it is consistent in its methods of measuring activity, so you can have a high level of confidence as to the relative difference in traffic and page views between your site and those of your competitors.
On the other hand, most felt the data from Alexa was very suspect and easily gamed. Because Alexa relies on browser plug-ins on individual computers to capture information, the results are reported to be somewhat easy to influence. One marketer noted that the only thing Alexa is good for is to manufacture metrics you can use to show a client how successful you were in marketing their site. Others were less critical but most felt the data was skewed and unreliable. See the screen shot below for actual comments.
Back to the reason I started down this path… I recently came across a situation where an agency used the Alexa ranking of a brand new site (vs. that of its peers) as the single metric for success. Not surprisingly, they achieved their goal of achieving a superior Alexa ranking in less than a month. Yet the same site doesn’t even register on Compete.com or Quantcast, and it has a Google Page Rank of 1. You can draw your own conclusions…
I decided to do my own test for my agency’s site and asked some of my team members to download the Alexa plug-in and visit our site each day for a few weeks. When we started the test on July 15 our site was ranked 990,000 out of 30 million. Just 2 weeks later, we are now at 730,000. At this rate we’ll be in the 600,000 range by August 15. If this plays out, it’s a pretty clear indicator that Alexa rankings are pretty easy to manipulate.
Here is a screenshot of some of the responses (sorry if it’s hard to read). Muy interesante!
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