Real Time Digital Episode 4
In this week’s episode Emily I speak with Nizzy Renaud from Etsy and our very own Josh Unseth! If you missed it live, listen here now or find us on iTunes!
Lauren Garcia: Hello, welcome to Real Time Digital hosted by TheJarGroup.com. I’m Lauren Garcia.
Emily Leidblad: And I’m Emily Leidblad and we are your digital divas. Thanks for listening in today.
Lauren: So today in our show, we have Nizzi Renaud from Etsy. She is the head of marketing and merchandising there.
Emily: And we will also be featuring Josh Unseth who is an SEO guru who actually works along with Lauren and I at The Jar Group. So, we are really excited to have them on the show and pick their brains a little bit. But before as you know we have our, “What’s hot and what’s not” segment. So Lauren what’s hot today? What’s hot in the blogs?
Lauren: What is hot? Well, you were actually telling me about a pretty cool article that you read about the iPad.
Emily: Yeah, no, I mean, everybody has been…Yeah, so the iPad. Super hot obviously.
Lauren: Still hot. Still smoking.
Emily: Still smoking. I was just reading an article and obviously, adults are loving the iPad but it is also been making headlines in a different age group which is kids. And I was just reading this really interesting article about toddlers using the iPad. And obviously, kids at this point are pretty accustomed to seeing their parent’s iPhone devices and touch screens. But there is an interesting study done where PBS sent 90 toddlers, I think they were aged between two and four, iPad touches and found that they use this vocabulary application, and that on average, their vocabularies increased by 31% from using this application. So…
Lauren: Wow.
Emily: Yeah. It is really interesting and another study, I guess, is done for this toddler who had never been exposed to an iPad or a touch screen before and it literally took him a matter of minutes to figure out how the device worked. So, he figured out the button and he figured out how to switch pages even the swiping motion. And it was almost like it was quickly internalized and almost innate with this device.
Lauren: Very intuitive.
Emily: So there is a huge market out there.
Lauren: Yeah, wow and now it is expanding to toddlers.
Emily: What was your funny anecdote, and I talked about that…
Lauren: Oh, yeah, last week my roommate Sarah, shout out to Sarah, she was telling me about this free concert in Central Park for I think it was Good Morning America. So, we woke up at six o’clock on Friday. Got down there by seven and we went to see Miley Cyrus. Don’t judge me.
Emily: I love Miley.
Lauren: She is catchy. I don’t know. But of course, there are a lot of toddlers there with their parents and everything and everyone had, well, I had my coffee but all these kids had big signs that they are holding up for Miley and everything. And I look over and to my right there is this child on her dad shoulders holding an iPad with her “I love Miley” sign on it.
Emily: Wow.
Lauren: And after she performed a little bit, then other show producer from Good Morning America came out and he was trying to keep the crowd entertained while they went into commercial breaks. And they were trying to vote for the favorite Miley sign that the crowd had made and everyone started chanting together, “iPad, iPad, iPad.” I was like oh my…
Emily: And not Miley.
Lauren: Yeah, everyone loved the iPad sign. So iPad very hot.
Emily: Yeah, so the marketers are definitely has to take in kids into consideration. They have taken this device by storm.
Lauren: A whole new demographic.
Emily: That’s awesome. What’s not hot.
Lauren: I guess but I don’t have TiVo. I still have the old iPod that doesn’t even have a touch screen but I rock it. I rock it.
Emily: Yeah, yeah. [laughter] What else? I think there’s viral campaigns are obviously always hot. They are always being new viral campaigns come out every day. So one that is really I think hilarious is one that has been huge lately was the “Smirnoff Ice‑ You have been Iced“, campaign.
Lauren: What’s that Em? I think I have heard a little bit about it but let’s hear the details.
Emily: This is literally hilarious. I find it to be so funny. So the concept is that you are supposed to…being Iced means that somebody comes up to you with a bottle of Smirnoff Ice.
Lauren: Oh my God.
Emily: Preferably a warm bottle Smirnoff Ice.
Lauren: Gross.
Emily: And sneaks up on somebody and basically yells at them “you’ve been Iced” or “you got Iced”. And the person who has been iced at that point has to do one of two things. Normally, they have to get down on one knee and chug this bottle Smirnoff Ice in front of everyone.
Lauren: Oh my God.
Emily: Preferably captured on video to be streamed on YouTube later.
Lauren: Of course.
Emily: But the catch is if the person who has been Iced has a bottle of Smirnoff Ice on them, they can retaliate and Ice the person back in which at this point, the person who tried to Ice…the unsuspecting victim has to drink both bottles of warm Smirnoff Ice.
Lauren: Oh my gosh.
Emily: I mean it sounds ridiculous and it is. This is like the sugary drink with like…
Lauren: Tons of carbonation, that’s so gross!
Emily: Exactly that you probably remember from high school. Like there’s blogs all over the place that have…Just pictures of people getting Iced. It is just really entertaining like the band…
Lauren: 303…yeah.
Emily: …was Iced on staged. Keith Wentz has been Iced and these pictures are all over the Internet. So it is really funny and the catch is that Smirnoff Ice is denying any association with this viral campaign. And so…
Lauren: Oh, really?
Emily: They are actually even playing a hand in trying to stop some of the websites and blogs that are going up around it. So I mean it’s really interesting how this viral campaign just took off.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Obviously they are getting tons of branding around it but they are denying any involvement with it.
Lauren: That’s interesting. So are we supposed to just be walking around with warm Smirnoff Ices in our pockets?
Emily: Yes.
Lauren: That’s gross. I don’t want to do that.
Emily: That is disgusting. But I would highly recommend that you always have a Smirnoff Ice tucked away in a back pocket just in case.
Lauren: Don’t get Iced, watch your back.
Emily: Yeah, exactly. So who knows how long this will last but I think it’s pretty hilarious.
Lauren: So I guess Icing… is that how you say? Icing?
Emily: Like Iced, Icing. Yeah.
Lauren: You get Iced? Getting Iced? I wouldn’t consider, if I got Iced, that is not hot. But if I Iced somebody, I would be like, that’s pretty hot. That’s hot.
Emily: Icing somebody hot, getting Iced not hot.
Lauren: Not hot. So, in other viral news, obviously everyone should be aware of the World Cup going on right now and that is blowing up all over social networks. I mean how could they not but…I mean, World Cup, World Cup, World Cup. Very hot.
Emily: Way hot. Way hot. I know that I practically…the sound of the horns and stuff and the audience. I feel like I sleep with that.
Lauren: Oh yeah.
Emily: That’s hilarious.
Lauren: Cool.
Emily: So go USA. Yeah. We will be tracking their status in the next few weeks. Anyways, let’s move on to a commercial break and once we get back. We will be featuring our very awesome guests. So stay tuned.
Announcer 2: Welcome back to Real Time Digital, presented by TheJarGroup.com. Online marketing with measurable results. Here are your digital divas, Emily and Lauren.
Emily: Welcome back to Real Time Digital hosted by me, Emily Liedblad and…
Lauren: And I’m Lauren Garcia, and we’re from The Jar Group.
Emily: We are so excited to feature our first guest. Today we’ll be interviewing Nizzi Renaud. She is the head of marketing and merchandising for Etsy, which is one of… the most innovative eCommerce sites, based right in DUMBO. Welcome to the show, Nizzi. We’re so excited to have you.
Nizzi Renaud: Thanks guys for having me. I’m excited to be talking to you.
Emily: Absolutely. We love Etsy, but why don’t you tell our listeners a little bit about what Etsy is, and how the company got started?
Nizzi: Sure. Etsy is an online marketplace where people can buy and sell handmade and vintage goods. So essentially, independent artists, designers, and creators come and set up shops on Etsy. And then, when you shop on Etsy, you’re buying directly from the artist. We started five years ago today, actually, so today’s our birthday.
Emily: Happy birthday.
Nizzi: It was founded in Brooklyn by Rob Kalin and a number of other guys who just really saw a need for a marketplace where people could really transact with one another.
Lauren: Cool, and Etsy kind of has a definite culture around it. There’s a real distinct feeling of independent artists, almost. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
Nizzi: Sure. Absolutely. In addition to being an online marketplace, we very much consider ourselves a community. So our members are actively supporting each other, and really the shared goal is offering alternatives to mass production and mass produced objects. We believe strongly, and our members are part of this, too, about highlighting the value of handmade goods, and encouraging awareness of the social and environmental implications of production and consumption.
We’re very much about that empowerment and it very exciting that we’ve grown as a movement, if you will, from a hand‑made perspective.
Lauren: How do you get that community? How did it start and how did it grow? How has it evolved?
Nizzi: For Etsy, the growth itself has just been very organic and very grassroots. From a marketing perspective, I’ll be frank that we don’t pay a lot for different marketing outreach. It’s very much about reaching out to communities directly, and having them then be involved in our site. We’re very active with different levels of social media. We’re thrilled that we have 1.25 million Twitter followers. We have great Facebook fans, as well. We have a very active forum section on our site, and we provide a lot of information. It’s not just about the buying and selling, but we provide a lot of information and great content, as well.
These are all the different factors that, I would say, are the secret to our success, in terms of really engaging buyers and sellers.
Emily: Were those social media efforts organic, or were they implemented by Etsy, or did they just kind of grow out of themselves?
Nizzi: They were implemented by Etsy, but they really grew out of themselves, in terms of people finding it to be a great channel to reach out to us. One thing that’s really exciting that we do a lot about is we give a lot of instruction to sellers in terms of teaching them on how to use social media as well for their own purposes. We’re thrilled that it’s not just about Etsy’s own Twitter following, for example, but we have many, many sellers who also use Twitter as a tool and as a resource, for example.
Emily: Right. How many people are on Etsy? How many members do you have?
Nizzi: We have close to five million registered members right now. A little over half a million of those are what we call active sellers.
Lauren: I just wanted to go back to the social really quickly. What are the main social networks that you use with Etsy, and how do you use them differently? I know on one of our earlier shows, we were talking to one of our guests about the differences in how he uses Twitter and Facebook, and how there are very distinct cultures, even around those two forms of social networking. So I just wondered if you guys use… what’s your favorite for Etsy and how do you use them differently?
Nizzi: Oh, goodness. Picking a favorite is a bit of Sophie’s choice. I’m not sure I could pick one over the other. I do think that they serve somewhat different purposes. Twitter is a great way to get key, quick messages across, but also for us to measure, use it as a barometer of what community sentiment is out there. Facebook provides a great merchandising tool, if you will, sort of showcasing products. We have also used Facebook… For example, we’ve created an app called My Etsy where sellers or buyers who may have favorites on Etsy can actually download that app and have it be part of their Facebook page. That showcases either their store if they’re a seller or their favorites if they’re a buyer.
It’s a great way to display your taste, from a curation perspective, but also just a fun way to engage with Facebook and with Etsy.
Emily: What are some of the success stories that you’ve come across on Etsy? Some of the really unique things that you’ve seen people selling on the site?
Nizzi: [laughs] The unique things that people sell, my goodness. We have… I think we’ve currently 5.9 million items currently listed. That’s a lot of really, really cool products and items on Etsy. It’s, again, hard to pick a favorite.
I’m a big jewelry aficionado, and we have some of the most amazing jewelry on Etsy. We have everything also from furniture to food, so it really runs the gamut.
In terms of success stories, that’s something that we’re…success is something that’s measured differently by different individuals. So success for some sellers, for example, could be… they’ve made additional money to help pay their rent. Success for some folks who are full time sellers is very much the ability to quit their day job.
One of the most inspiring sort of series on Etsy is our “Quit Your Day Job” series, which exists on Etsy’s blog, where we interview Etsy sellers who have quit their day job, or who have really sort of been able to see a substantial impact.
Emily: All right. So Nizzi, as the head of marketing and merchandising, what are your main responsibilities at Etsy? How do you help the company grow?
Nizzi: Sure. From my perspective, I really run the consumer marketing end of things. I do have a colleague who’s very focused on seller marketing within Etsy. But on my end, we do a lot of email. Email is a great channel for us from a marketing perspective, and one that we’ve just seen growing like crazy. We do a lot of partnerships. Partnerships with different media companies or different sort of great websites that we’ll have to align ourselves with. And we do a lot of PR outreach, as well.
Lauren: Cool. And going off of that, what advice do you give new Etsy users or to active‑sellers as you put it? What advice do you give them to get noticed?
Emily: Yeah. With 5.9 million items, I am sure it can be a little bit of an onslaught of options for shoppers.
Nizzi: That’s absolutely an issue. The best, we always tell people is use the Etsy resources. But first and foremost the best sort of practical tip I can give people, is make sure your photography is great.
Just only in selling, it doesn’t matter whether you are selling on Etsy or anywhere else. It is all about that visual. People can’t touch and feel, so it really is about that visual. So great photography always help sellers get noticed.
Emily: And how do people get onto your home page as the featured sellers and what not?
Nizzi: Our featured sellers change three times a week. We actually do have a process where our merchandising team and my PR Manager get together. We look for great items, great products, sellers who are doing really well. Sellers who have interesting stories. Sellers who may also speak to certain themes that are happening. Whether it’s great dads for Father’s Day, and just look for interesting folks to feature.
Emily: So what are the goals of Etsy now that it has become definitely at the forefront of eCommerce for homemade accessories and the like? Are you guys going to work on expanding into other areas perhaps? Or is it going to be more of a focus on a community that exists and is growing and really growing that user base?
Nizzi: Sure. So our big goal is really to be global. We are currently very global. In fact about 30% of transactions … so that’s about one in three transactions on Etsy. Either the buyer or the seller is not currently in the US. So it is very much a global marketplace. We are just really looking to expand from that perspective. We opened up earlier this year in Berlin.
We have decided to do more and more there. We’ve started a French blog, and a German blog as well. So there is just more that can be done in terms of spreading the word about handmade on a global scale.
Lauren: Awesome. Nizzi, we are so happy to have you on the show. Thanks for coming and talking to us about Etsy. For our listeners again that’s www.etsy.com. Stay tuned for our next guest.
Announcer 2: Welcome back to Real Time Digital, presented by TheJarGroup.com. Online marketing with measurable results. Here are your digital divas, Emily and Lauren.
Lauren: Welcome back to Real Time Digital, I am Lauren Garcia.
Emily: And I am Emily Liedbald from The JAR Group.
Lauren: We are your digital divas. Once again, we have Josh here from The JAR Group. Welcome Josh.
Josh Unseth: Hey ladies how are you?
Lauren and Emily: Great.
Emily: So Josh is the SEO guru at The JAR group. So why don’t you start by just giving us a quick introduction about what is SEO and what do you do at The JAR Group.
Josh: Sure. So, search engine optimization real quickly, is just basically taking a look at websites and seeing what we can get to rank in Google, and Bing, Yahoo and other search engines. We try to drive up pages in the search engine results so that we can get people to the things that they are looking for when they make Google searches, Bing searches or Yahoo searches or whatever it is.
Lauren: So Josh, then what do you exactly for The JAR Group and how do you provide value for our clients?
Josh: OK. So one of the things that we do for clients is, we take a look at their sites and we run through it. We look at the kinds of things they are selling or the kinds of pages that they’re creating if it’s content. We then do some keyword research, find out what people search for online. Then optimize their site for those keywords. And do a lot of link building and stuff. Like creative ways to get links and other such things. So that they can get Google, Bing, Yahoo, they love links. That’s kind of the way that you can give your vote of confidence to a site, is if you link to them.
So they look all over the Internet, they send these robots all over, they find links. And every time they find a link to your page, Google says, “Look. This is a credible site. They are getting a vote of confidence.” And they rank you higher for whatever keyword that link is.
So what we do is after we pull out the pages that we want to optimize for, then we start looking for good links to those pages.
Lauren: Cool. So when you say you optimize sites, what do you do exactly? You work with keywords a lot, but what specifically … how is the page optimized aside from linking?
Josh: Well it has everything to do with the content on the site, right? So your meta‑titles are really important. Which is the title of the page that appears if you are searching in Firefox. That little blue bar at the very top, that’s the meta‑title. That’s really important for rankings. The on site content is really important for rankings.
And meta‑descriptions which the user, the person who comes to a site doesn’t even see, are really important for click throughs. Google actually uses the text in meta‑descriptions to display the text on the search engine results.
Emily: So, in terms of just people who have no idea or knowledge about online marketing, do you think that most people understand the value of SEO? Or is there still a lot of opportunity there? How do you convey that…
Lauren: …the value.
Emily: Yeah, exactly. How you convey the value to people who have no idea of what SEO is or why they should have SEO on their website.
Josh: That’s a really good question. I think that there’s an awful lot of opportunity. I’m amazed at some of the huge companies that I take a look at the sites of whose SEO is terrible. And you know what? I wouldn’t even say their SEO, just the way their site is constructed isn’t optimized for people or search engines oftentimes. So, the other SEO analysts at The Jar Group…now Lerche did a piece on a blog about how the Fortune 500 have basically kind of… they’ve ignored SEO, right? They spend millions of dollars a day purchasing keywords for their site, and their search engine optimization is… If you go to their sites and you know enough SEO to assess a site for its SEO quality, if you will, you’re going to look at these Fortune 500 companies sites and they’re terrible, many of them.
We did a site assessment on Safeway last week on our podcast. Their site is awful, with regard to SEO.
There’s a lot of opportunity, even with companies that have tons of money.
Lauren: Interesting. Just because they’re not aware of the impact of SEO, do you think?
Josh: I think it’s because it’s easier to buy traffic. If you do search engine optimization, what’s going to happen is you’re going to start linking through really good keywords. You’re going to start getting really, really good traffic to your site, and it’s going to be constant. It’s going to be six months, eight months, 12 months, three years, whatever. You’re going to continually see that traffic. So SEO is a really good long term strategy, but when you’re trying to pitch it to someone who is really worried about the current site traffic, it’s much easier to say, “Hey, we can buy traffic for your site. We can drive 10, 000 hits to your site, but it’s going to cost you X amount, and then when you stop paying for that traffic, it just disappears.”
My guess is that it’s probably just because it’s easier to purchase traffic.
Emily: So if you could tell somebody one thing about SEO who didn’t really have a previous knowledge of it, what would that be? Whether it be a tip for them, or just a bit of knowledge. What would you say?
Josh: One piece of knowledge about search engine optimization. I would say if you’re constructing a small to medium size site, use an open source content management system. It’s much easier to optimize. That would probably be my quickest, biggest tip for anyone who is constructing an enterprise level site. WordPress, for example, would be a good example that you could use.
Lauren: Oh, and that’s what we use, too.
Josh: Yeah, that is what we use. That’s The JAR Group’s site. [laughter]
Emily: Comes from the best. So, you have actually been doing some really cool stuff at The Jar Group. You just launched a podcast with the other SEO master… at The Jar Group, Matt Lerche, and have also been doing some speaking at conferences. So, tell us a little bit more about that.
Josh: I’d love to. What Matt and I have done is we’ve put together a podcast that we take a look at… we do one web site review, we do a tool review, and we do a week in review of search engines and search in general. Our first one we did a couple of weeks ago. We call it Jar SEO, and we take a look at Safeway, like I said. We did a week in review where we take a look at the now famous May Day update, which is basically just Google making some changes to how it ranks for what’s called long-tail traffic in its search engine results. Finally, we did a tool review on Link Tracker.
Our goal with this podcast is to look at some of the more advanced elements of SEO that maybe a lot of search engine shows don’t look at, and maybe are really only interesting to geeky people. Thinks like what happens when you wrap your site in a secure socket layer. Right? Stuff like that.
Lauren: It sounds pretty in depth.
Josh: Yeah, right. That’s one of the things that Matt and I really enjoy, that kind of advanced elements of SEO. There is a little bit more to it than just building links for sites and such. We really work with our clients. In particular, we work really hard on helping them optimize content on their site, so it’s not just about getting them links.
Lauren: And so for our listeners, if you’re interested in more advanced SEO tips from Matt and Josh, make sure to check out their podcast, as well.
Emily: Where are you guys doing that from, Josh?
Lauren: Yeah, where can we find it?
Emily: What’s the URL?
Josh: You can find it on The Jar Group’s website, so TheJarGroup.com. I think that we’ve also uploaded it to iTunes. So, my guess is that you can find it there by searching “JAR SEO” in the iTunes store.
Lauren: Well, Cool.
Emily: So, is SEO more important for some web sites than others? How do people value SEO, depending on their website? Is it more valuable for say eCommerce sites rather than for informational sites? Or blogs…and stuff like that?
Josh: It depends on each individual site, but search engine optimization… it’s better to optimize your site from the outset, or at least make it so that it can be optimized from the outset. When you are first creating the site or whatever it is, whether it’s remaking a site or creating it from the beginning. But it depends on your revenue models. So, if you’re a content heavy site and you make your money by selling ads, then search engine optimization is perfect, right? Because the more people you have visiting your site, the more money you can make. The more potential for increased revenues.
If you’re an eCommerce site, then the more people that you get to your site through relevant keywords… so let’s say you’re looking for… if you want to purchase a snowboard, you may want to optimize for words like “Buy snowboards” rather than just the word “Snowboards” because “Buy snowboards” is going to net more sales.
If you have an ecommerce site that… you’re going to make a lot of money also if you do good SEO. The difference is in how the… for each site, how we implement a strategy. So, for an ecommerce site, like I said, we’re going to optimize keywords that are going to have high consumer intent to purchase. And for a content site, you’re going to optimize for words that are just sort of high traffic, and people that are looking for how‑to articles, or something like that, like questions.
Lauren: Right. Very cool. So Josh, what is funniest thing, or site, or keywords you’ve ever had to optimize for? What’s your go to hilarious story? Because I’m sure there must be a lot tucked away in there.
Josh: Well, there’s a lot of funny things that have happened. A couple weeks ago, one of my sites was ranking for “Lady Gaga.” That was accidental.
Lauren: Love Lady Gaga.
Josh: I think one of the funniest things; I had a site online for probably six years now. It’s not so much what I’ve optimized for, but it got hacked a few years ago, and someone started building links to it that are irrelevant, and a little bit racy. So, occasionally I’ll see in my search results some terms that I wouldn’t necessarily have optimized the site for, myself. It makes me laugh. That’s probably the funniest thing that’s happened.
Emily: All right, Josh. Well, thanks so much for joining us and spreading your SEO wisdom to our listeners. We really appreciate your time. Can you just give us a little bit more information, if someone wants to reach out to you, Josh?
Josh: Sure. My email address at The Jar Group is Joshua.Unseth@TheJarGroup.com, or you can go to the website and find our general email box and just put my name in the subject line.
Emily: Thanks, Josh.
Lauren: Fantastic.
Josh: No problem. Thank you for having me.
Emily: Thanks listeners, as well. That wraps our episode for today. Thanks so much for tuning in, and keep on listening to Real Time Digital. Signing out, your hosts Emily Liedblad…
Lauren: And Lauren Garcia.
Emily: Have a good week. [music]
