The race to the White House is on — and also online!

Presidential candidates are turning to social media because that’s where many potential voters are. For publishers, these social media users are your potential site visitors, so it’s good to know how the candidates are reaching them.

Augmenting their traditional media efforts, candidates for the 2008 Presidential election are also using various forms of social media, from blogs, message boards, podcasts, user-generated videos, photo-sharing sites and more. Barack Obama, John McCain and Hillary Clinton each have YouTube, Facebook and MySpace pages, which are updated frequently. This doesn’t count the scores of Facebook groups and MySpace pages maintained by their supporters.

Senator John McCain’s Facebook page is a good example of connecting and interacting with online users. The McCain campaign makes good use of online video and posts frequent updates on that site. The “Wall” section of Facebook allows folks to post their comments while the calendar section shows upcoming campaign events. the McCain campaign engages with the online user through different media: online video, comments section, sharing photos and an events calendar. McCain’s daughter, Meghan, has been drumming up interest in her father’s campaign with behind-the-scenes photos and video posts from the campaign trail.

Given the success of grassroots video for Senator Barack Obama’s campaign, it’s no surprise that part of his social media effort is a channel on YouTube. The channel also features a subscribe link, which is a great “pull” tactic. If you’re going to use online social media, consider the media as a pull tactic which draws interested persons to you and your site.

Senator Hillary Clinton’s Friendster site is a good example of establishing an online community.  On this social networking page, the Clinton campaign connects supporters to each other and becomes a centralized place for them to congregate online. Senator Clinton uses her blog to speak directly to her supporters, giving her message more of a personalized voice. If you’re an online publisher considering a way to personalize your company, blogs can provide such a path.

Social media can help the candidates—and you, too—but only if you follow some ground rules. Consider these guidelines laid out by the Social Media blog, and our interpretation of them:

1. Communication is conversation, not a monologue. Social media implies that you facilitate a two-way discussion, rather than a one-way bombardment of marketing messages. In short, this means that you stay engaged and in a discussion with visitors. Sometimes this dialogue will open you up for attacks, but that’s the part of the freedom that this discourse involves.

2. Participants are people, not organizations. Don’t hide behind a mask of anonymity; let readers know who you are and speak to them on the same level.

3. Honesty and transparency are vital. Folks know when you are enhancing the conversation with a sales pitch, and they’ll gladly ignore you if carry on this way. The more honest and transparent you are, the more readers will trust you. So don’t try to spin or manipulate the conversation; keep it honest and simple.

4. It’s pull, not push. Don’t try to force your message on folks in social media, because in this world, users are in control. Respect the ebb and flow in your dialogue.

It’s easy to see how these principles are applicable to political discourse. But they also can serve as the winning ticket for those of you considering casting a vote for online social media.

— Roger Park, Manager, Marketing Communications

Stay updated on the Election 2008 with the Yahoo! Political Dashboard

How to drive revenue from the ads on your site

As a publisher, it’s important to know how to optimize your web site to help drive better traffic. This can help drive up your program earnings which is enough motivation for most publishers.

Last year, Yahoo!’s Cody Simms and Amit Paunikar wrote in a great four-part series on this blog about various optimization practices. In case you missed it—and in case you don’t have time to read a four-part series—we’ve boiled it down to some key tips to help your business.

Focus on making your site as text-based as possible
“Crawlers” are programs that analyze the content on your site for ad targeting purposes. Be sure to include important topic-oriented items in the text fields of your site, rather than hinting at them in image or other elements.

Consider adding dynamic content on the home page
Content that frequently changes while remaining on-topic for your audience not only keeps the interest of your audience, it perks up the attention of our content analyzers. Static content could bore users, which may result in low click-through rates.

Structure your site
Your site structure helps your users and our systems to understand what your site is about. Here are some tips:
• Integrate keywords into your URL structure. Consider using permalinks, rather than query strings.
• Use strong keywords as “anchor text.” Link text should be descriptive rather than text like “Click here.”
• Use concise descriptors. Put short descriptions under a link when possible.

Content do’s
You want to make your content relevant, which helps drive your click-through rate. Relevant content can also help ads become more appealing to your users. Here are several actions to take that should help on this front:
• Write for users. Users generally come to your page to read your content, not to click on ads.
• Maintain your editorial integrity. Write unique articles that drive traffic to your site.
• Take time to optimize your web pages. Use distinct titles, headers and section headlines for each article.
• Limit the number of low-content pages on your site. If you have a page with a lot of images, make sure you use alternate text.
• Maintain a high “signal-to-noise” ratio. Keep the content of each page focused on one or two topics at most.

 Content don’ts
Simplicity helps clarity, so you don’t want to load your site down with too much stuff. Here are a few tips of what not to do with your content:
• Don’t use unnecessary code.
• Don’t use unnecessary language.
• Don’t try to take shortcuts around lack of content or traffic.
• Whatever network you use, don’t violate the “Terms of Service” or “Terms and Conditions.”

For more details and additional tips, please read the entire series:

Optimizing for Relevancy, Part I: Semantics and Bots

Optimizing for Relevancy, Part II: Anatomy of a Web Page

Optimizing for Relevancy, Part III: Content Do’s

Optimizing for Relevancy, Part IV

— Roger Park, Manager, Marketing Communications

…and how to pick one

Editor’s note: A while back, we told you about our purchase of Right Media, creators of the Right Media Exchange, but you still may not be sure why we bought them or even what they do. At Right Media, they get asked these questions every day. Now that they are part of the Yahoo! family, we thought we’d have them tell you in their own words.

You’re probably aware of what a stock exchange is—or at least aware that it somehow controls your destiny. But an ad exchange is something a little more foreign. In 2005, Right Media launched the Right Media Exchange and the online advertising community responded with a resounding “WHAT??”

An ad exchange works on the same fundamental concept as a stock exchange: it’s a (virtual) place where you can buy and sell stuff, in this case online advertising. Publishers and ad networks make their inventory available for sale, and buyers—advertisers and other ad networks—attempt to purchase that inventory.

Ad networks are critical for aggregating audiences. But if they’re disconnected from the rest of the market, they can hinder efficiency and profitability because they offer limited supply and demand. For publishers who “daisy chain” networks together based on their best guesses as to which networks will be able to pay them the most, manually prioritizing and allocating inventory to networks can be a hassle. For example, how do you know that the network at the top of your chain can pay you more than one at the middle of your chain? You don’t.

The online ad exchange was conceived as a way of opening up what’s closed, simplifying the complicated, and making more money as a result. In the exchange, all market players—advertisers, publishers and networks—are interconnected on a common platform and have open access to each others’ supply and demand. They trade inventory in a real-time auction, letting the market determine pricing.

Instead of juggling networks based on a lot of guesswork, publishers simply let all buyers (networks and advertisers) compete for each individual ad impression, and allocate it to the highest bidder automatically. The publisher gets more revenue on the impression with little effort, and the buyer, bidding according to its preset goals, can get better return on investment.

So what makes one ad exchange different from another? 

When you’re looking at joining an exchange, ask these questions:

1. Does it work in real time?  Using historical data is like checking yesterday’s weather to predict what to wear today.
2. Is it neutral?  A neutral exchange simply provides a technology that allows for buying and selling, and doesn’t attempt to hold all the relationships with the buyers and sellers.  
3. Is it scaleable?  If your site goes from 100,000 to 100,000,000 impressions a month, will that exchange be able to handle that volume?
4. Is it secure?  How does the exchange protect you as a publisher? (This is key: It isn’t as easy as you may think.)
5. Is there open competition?  Does the exchange allow non-members to compete with exchange members?
6. Is it a community?  Sure, there’s competition, but are there also forums so that people can communicate with each other and form partnerships?
7. Is it a technology platform?  Is it open, with APIs that anyone can connect to? 
8. Does it have publishers, advertisers AND networks?
9. Is there a solution for me?  Does the exchange offer a solution for both enterprise and non-enterprise publishers?
10. Are there strings attached?  What else does the exchange require you to do?

Making choices about your online advertising is difficult.  You are paying for bandwidth, building content—even feeding your families—so learning how to make a wise choice is imperative.  Be prepared to ask questions—HARD questions—when choosing an ad exchange. Most importantly, learn how to effectively use it.  Testing an exchange is different than testing a network, so learn from the community, get assistance from the exchange business teams.  Remember how different your world became when you went from dial-up to high speed?  Your online advertising is about to start moving that much faster.

—Jerri Gillean, Business Development Manager, Right Media Exchange

Beginning today, Yahoo! Web Hosting has gone “unlimited”

Editor’s Note: If you have a web site or want to build one—and since you’re reading a blog about online publishing, we’re guessing that’s probably the case—Yahoo! has good news for you. Starting today, our colleagues in Yahoo! Small Business are offering unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth and unlimited email storage to their web hosting customers.

Yahoo! Small Business customers have told us loud and clear that they want getting online to be as easy and painless as possible. Instead of worrying about things like, “How many visitors can my site handle?” and “How many pages can I build?,” small business owners want to focus on growing their businesses and driving traffic to their sites, feeling comfortable knowing their hosting package will grow with their business.

The new Yahoo! Web Hosting offers unlimited disk space, unlimited data transfer, unlimited email storage and 1,000 email accounts—all for $11.95 a month. For the very large majority of small business owners who want a professional-looking site in hours, the decision to choose Yahoo! has suddenly become much easier.

Don’t know the first thing about web design? No sweat. Every Yahoo! Small Business service includes award-winning, easy-to-use web site design tools that can help business owners with little or no technical experience to quickly and easily build great-looking sites. You’ll also get a free domain name and 24/7 customer support, plus your satisfaction is guaranteed for 30 days. And if that wasn’t enough, Yahoo! Small Business automatically optimizes your web site and submits it to top search engines (I can think of a pretty good one) to help customers find your business.

Existing web hosting customers have already received an email invitation with the option to migrate to this new plan. If you’re not an existing customer and you want to get your business online, please visit Yahoo!’s Web Hosting site for more information.

Now go spread out. There’s plenty of room!

— Guy Yalif, Director, Web Hosting Products, Yahoo! Small Business