The Role of Social Media in Search Engine Marketing

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The Role of Social Media in Search Engine Marketing

Introduction


Contents:

- The correlation between social and search

- Social media for backlink generation

- Crowd-sourced content

- Website stickiness

- Social ads

Introduction

Your host

Hi, I’m Dane Cobain!

- Social media marketing specialist of four years

- Strategist/Copywriter

- Industry speaker/commentator

- @DaneCobain

- [email protected]

THE CORRELATION BETWEEN SOCIAL

AND SEARCH

The Correlation Between Social and Search

Search and social are more intertwined than ever• Google+

• Twitter firehose supplying data to Google

• Search query volume increases

• Site engagement

• High visibility of social sites in SERPs

• Crossover potential (i.e. blogs, forums)


Positive correlation

• Some social media activity does not directly affect rankings

• But there’s often a correlation between the two

• Last year, SearchMetrics examined 300,000 URLs

• Specific elements were measured on each page

• These were combined with the rankings of those pages in search

• This allowed them to determine the factors that the high ranking pages most often had in common


But why?

Even though social activity doesn’t factor in to the algorithm, it helps in other ways:

- Increases reach

- Introduces influencers to the brand

- Increased search volume

- Encourages user trust (improving website ‘stickiness’)

- Social activity itself can be indexed


Examples:

Example #1: Viral Video

- Originally created for social- Content is shared by the brand’s followers- News outlets pick up on it and start writing about it (including links)- People start searching for the video by name

Example #2: Influencers

- A customer posts a complaint on Facebook- The brand responds to the complaint and corrects it- The customer, who has a successful blog, goes from negative to positive- They write about the experience on your blog (including links)

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BACKLINK

GENERATION

Social Media for Backlink Generation

Passive backlink generation

By simply being active on social, you increase your odds of receiving backlinks

Include relevant hashtags on Twitter and Google+ to reach a wider audience

Also drives traffic in its own right

It’s likely that you’re already doing this


Active backlink generation: Influencer outreachProactively search out influential (2,000+ followers) social media users

Could be either individuals or brands

Find people who are posting similar content and approach them

TOOLS:

- Twitter advanced search- SocialMention- Wefollow- Twitter lists


Case Study: O2 Emergency Services Network


Active backlink generation: URL monitoring

Use inbuilt social search tools to find people linking to your URL

Twitter dashboards are particularly powerful here

Find people who are linking to your content and request a link from their website

Particularly useful for high-value content

I.E. If someone links to one of your infographics, give them permission to use it on their site if they link back to you


Active backlink generation: #JournoRequests

Key hashtags to monitor on Twitter:

#JournoRequest: Used by UK journalists looking for case studies/sources

#PRRequest: Used by PR professionals looking to place their stories

#BloggerRequest: Used by bloggers to request products for review

Extremely useful for generating high quality links

Also raises your overall profile

However, it can be time consuming


Active backlink generation: #JournoRequests

Examples: Some of the organisations that have either linked to me or featured me as a source off the back of social media conversations.


Active backlink generation: Partnerships

Let’s talk about YouTub’s ‘collab’ phenomenon

Can be used by brands with great success

Example: Canon LEGRIA mini launch

• New camera launched with four YouTubers

• Canon provided the reach with advertising

• YouTubers provided engagement (comments, likes, etc)

• Both the YouTubers and the brand grew throughout the campaign


Active backlink generation: Partnerships

Partnerships don’t just apply to YouTube, although it’s the perfect network for them

Approach other content creators (both brands and individuals) via social

Choose similarly-sized brands in a related but separate industry

Example: A cheese manufacturer partnering with a cracker brand on cheese reviews

Or: A car manufacturer partnering with a record label to create driving playlists

Link to each other through combined marketing activity

Co-create content, or create content for each other’s site

CROWDSOURCED CONTENT

Crowd-Sourced Content

What is crowd-sourced content?


Why crowdsource?

• Your followers provide the content for you

• Provides social media engagement and blog fodder simultaneously

• Uses natural language – important for searches

• Improves reach – participants are more likely to share

• Can improve website stickiness

• Two minds are better than one, but dozens are even better

• It’s easy!


Crowdsourcing ideas

• Gather your most frequently asked questions from social and write a blog post to answer them

• Ask real people how they’re using your product/service

• Combine with competitions – i.e. a photography competition

• Embed other people’s tweets in a relevant article (even if they didn’t tweet you directly)

• Internal crowdsourcing – ask your employees

• Search for content that people are already posting

WEBSITE STICKINESS

Website Stickiness

What is stickiness?

Simply put, does your website include functionality to encourage people to ‘stick around’?

What’s to stop people from navigating away once they’ve read your blog post or filled out your data capture form?

Check your average visit duration on Google Analytics

Monitor stickiness over time

What pages do people spend the most time on? Why?

Website Stickiness

Common ‘stickiness’ features

• Gamification

• Comments

• Discussion forums

• Video content

• Games

• Interactive demos

• Social Connectivity

Website Stickiness

More on social connectivity

Apply common social networking elements to your own website – if it works elsewhere, it could also work for you:

• Profiles

• IM/Private Messaging

• Friend systems

• Social comments (i.e. Facebook/G+)

• Personalisation (think of Facebook’s pagerank)

Website Stickiness

More on social connectivity

Apply common social networking elements to your own website – if it works elsewhere, it could also work for you:

• Ability to like/dislike

• Social login (makes it easier to sign up)

• Easy social sharing on other networks

• User/content recommendations based on social feeds

• Leaderboards (most-followed, most-liked, etc.)

SOCIAL ADS

Social Ads

Why bother?

Social advertisements can allow you to do things that search engine advertising can’t:

• Sponsored social posts• Remarketing via social sites• Target imported e-mail lists

They can also help to:

• Reduce CPC• Generate additional organic impressions

However:

• Consumers are typically in less of a purchasing mindset

Social Ads

Sponsored social posts

• Available on most major networks (including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)

• A paid investment boosts organic updates

• Can be combined with powerful interest/demographic data

• Pro Tip: Use only on certain posts

• Top 90% of performers• Including a call-to-action

Social Ads

Remarketing via social

• Some networks, Facebook included, allow remarketing

• Show Facebook ads just to users who’ve also visited your website

• Combine this with Facebook’s conversion pixel to track users’ end-to-end behaviour

• Highly effective when used in conjunction with search engine remarketing

• Most effective way to generate ROI

Social Ads

Target imported e-mail lists

• Facebook and certain other networks also allow you to import a custom audience

• If you have an e-mail list, you can import that list and target all associated Facebook accounts

• Run advertisements at this list that tie in/run at the same time as your e-mail marketing campaigns

• Or simply use this list to duplicate your PPC campaigns within Facebook!

RECAP

Introduction


We talked about:

- The correlation between social and search

- Social media for backlink generation

- Crowd-sourced content

- Website stickiness

- Social ads

Introduction

Your host

Please feel free to send me your follow-up questions if they don’t get answered today.

- Social media marketing specialist of four years

- Strategist/Copywriter

- Industry speaker/commentator

- @DaneCobain

- [email protected]

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+44 (0) 1628 [email protected]

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+44 (0) 1628 [email protected]

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fst SINGAPORE21a Haji LaneSingapore189214

+65 6291 [email protected] © 2015 fst marketing communications ltd