The Newest Challenger To SEO: Social Discovery

The Newest Challenger To SEO:Social Discovery

Brandon Uttley, CEOCommand Partners

www.commandpartners.com

Presented To:Search Exchange 2011

What We’ll Cover

• What is Social Discovery?

• Why it matters

• How to take advantage of it

Especially how to think of it terms of content optimization

What Is Social Discovery?

• Until about three weeks ago...it didn’t mean much

• It sounded like a great concept

• Use of social tools to !nd relevant content

• Systems that enable sharing of content with other users

• “We’re at 2004-2005 of social networks in social discovery.” —Tagged CEO Greg Tseng

I had started to read this term “social discovery” in the past couple months. It sounded kind of theoretical.

Boom.

Suddenly, Facebook has brought the concept of social discovery to life with Open Graph via Timeline, Ticker, etc.

Houston, this is Social

Discovery.

We have lifto".

Social Discovery, here we come.

What are people doing?

Social discovery allows you to discover things via social media...

Goodbye, Hello, [insert active verb here].

Eating Listening To Doing Buying

Watching TV

Watching Movies Reading Attending

The Like button was just the beginning. Someone called it a “blunt instrument.” We were forced to use it because it was the only option.

“Like” Is So 2010.

Now Action & ConsumptionWill Be The New Norms

“We call it real-time serendipity.”—Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Serendipity (n.)

The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or bene!cial way

Of course, things don’t just always happen randomly. Someone had to put something in the stream

Chance Doesn’t Just Happen

Relevant content increases your chancesof someone “discovering” something

Of course, things don’t just always happen randomly.

The New Open Graphhttp://developers.facebook.com/docs/beta

At FB’s core is the social graph; people and the connections they have to everything they care about. In 2010, FB extended the social graph, via the Open Graph protocol, to include 3rd party websites and pages that people liked. Now extending the Open Graph to include arbitrary actions and objects created by 3rd party apps and enabling these apps to integrate deeply into the Facebook experience.

A#nity + Interests + Social Sharing

As social media users and consumers, this is how Social Discovery will benefit us.

Think Lifestreaming.

The game is changing. Everything that can potentially be shared WILL be shared, allowing others to be part of the experiences.

Nike+ is a great example. Instantly share you activity to Facebook.

Trenny is another for social fashion.

Pinterest. Lots of stff shared.

Spotify is another.

“People discover music through their friends. Because they’re social, they’re more engaged. Because they’re more engaged, they’re also twice as likely to pay for music.

Social discovery on Facebook means we’re bringing people back to paying for music again.”

—Spotify CEO Daniel Ek

This is one opinion. Another is, your friends’ music taste is crap...so “social discovery” of their music stream is worthless to you. Same thing can be said about their choices in food, clothes, books, etc.

“Sharing with your friends generates an ampli!cation. When more of your friends see it and it generates clicks back to a site, that’s of value to a media company. We’re going to signi!cantly increase the amount of sharing.”

—Facebook’s EMEA Platform Partnerships Director Christian Hernandez

EMEA=Europe, Middle East and Africa

Four Major Discovery Buckets

Communication Games Media Lifestyle

Stumbleupon

Reddit

Foursquare

Angry Birds Net$ix Foodspotting

WOW Spotify Nike+

Words With Friends Instagram Pinterest

Music

RandomStu"

Discover new music...discover new stuff/ways to do things

What friends are participating in...what apps they are using..and much more

I learn hear about a new extreme sports race

I can discover something I didn’t know about, a new social site in this case

How To Take Advantageof Social Discovery

For Businesses To Compete

They will need to “App-e-tize”

Less Marketing, More Storytelling

For businesses, they need to think about how they can enable their users to share what they are doing, reading, buying, etc.

Example where a user adds a food app to their Timeline. Later they take an action in the app. It shows up in the News Feed, Timeline and Ticker.

Changes In the StreamNew Graph Rank

All Updates Will Appear In The Ticker

Only Important Events Go To The News Feed

Graph Rank is joining or replacing EdgeRank

Updates + Sponsored Stories

Sponsored Stories Will Increase

Organic Vs. Guaranteed/Paid Distribution

Now Called Graph Targeting By Facebook

Graph targeting will be huge...and Sponsored Stories will be a way to take advantage of social sharing. Example of person listening to a song, which Spotify or the band can take ads out on.

“Algorithmic discovery worked very well in a world where links were the dominant force.

When you overlay the social component, you begin to see a new way of discovery which, in the real world, happened already—you bought something at Topshop or a book, movie or CD because your friend recommended it.”

—Christian Hernandez

Publish content people care about. Ask: How can you build experiences and publish content that people will put in their Timelines?

Speaking of Algorithms…What About Google?

Google, the No. 1 search engine, accounted for 11.1 billion searches in August, according to ComScore.

Well, don’t count them out. Hardly.

Google+

Google+ is huge, too. Faster initial growth than Facebook.

Google+ has 50 million users.

Google+ hit this number in 88 days vs. the 3% years it took Facebook.

"Theoretically, Google has the edge" over Facebook, IDC analyst Scott Ellison says.

"Theoretically, Google has the edge" over Facebook, IDC analyst Scott Ellison says.

Duh.

Changing Search Results

Google is already zooming ahead with better search results.

Tailored Search Results

Now displaying annotated results.

Diversity of The Search Experience

Think about the richness of the search experience today

With Google in particular, Universal Search, Personalized Search, Social Search, Instant Search, Local/Mobile, Preview and even the currently suspended Real-Time Search all factor together to&give users what they’re looking for

Compared to bland search results made up mostly of just web pages several years ago

When you use the schema.org vocabulary to mark up your content, Google can use that markup to improve the display of your site in Google Web Search. Use Rich Snippets Testing Tools in Webmaster.

Google reports the average consumer is discernibly in$uenced by 10.4 discrete pieces of information—up from 5.3 sources a year ago (Source: Google Insights)

Social Authority Is Growing

An author’s authority on social networking sites is in!uencing traditional SEO

Social shows authority—not relevance

"Social signals at best will show that something is “rank worthy”

Example: Car insurance (you can get tons of likes, shares, etc. but with no links you won’t rank. Authority Rank being considered along with PageRank.

Google+

Social connections may improve click-through rates on search ads and organic listings

Tra!c is pre-quali"ed and may increase the engagement of the person on a site#

Search engines trust the “social web”

To Sum Up

Social discovery is here

Sharing is going to grow even more #

Think actions and apps

Any Questions?

Thank you.

Brandon Uttley, CEObrandon@commandpartners.com

Twitter: @brandonuttley