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Posted on October 15, 2009
The Progression From Search to Social Media Marketing
BY PETE HALL
**This article outlines a personal experience with a client, leading them from search marketing success into social media and word of mouth marketing. To respect their privacy, I will only refer to them as 'The Client'.**
Five years ago, search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising were only beginning to take shape as legitimate lead generation and marketing strategies. At the time, SEO and PPC were cutting edge marketing strategies - many brands and companies had heard the buzz surrounding SEO and PPC, but were unable to pinpoint strategy or purpose behind it.
Today, SEO and PPC have evolved into common marketing strategies for brands to place their marketing budget. Companies understand the huge opportunities that exist within search marketing for return on investment. Social media, conversely, exists much like SEO and PPC did five years ago. Companies and brands are keen to explore the social media space, but are often unable to define social media marketing success or execute a defined strategy.
Within our niche in the industry, we execute both search marketing and social media marketing for clients. As such, there exists a unique opportunity to take learnings and success from search marketing efforts and transition into the social media space. This is what happened with an opportunistic client of ours.
We were initially hired to restructure The Client's AdWords account and increase conversion volume. They had managed their PPC efforts internally, and reached out to us to take their account to the next level. After much research and testing, we were able to determine what converted within their account - what calls to action best resonated with users, what keywords and themes were most effective, and what landing page variations were most conducive to converting. We branched out their PPC efforts into Yahoo! and Bing with continued success. Eventually, The Client began asking, "what next?" - their PPC accounts were converting in record numbers at the lowest cost per conversion yet.
Moving forward, we thoroughly researched The Client and their presence online and saw a huge opportunity for them to improve their organic search rankings. Therefore, our next step in their overall strategy was an SEO overhaul. We were able to construct an SEO blueprint based upon their PCC successes and laid out a clear strategy with actionable goals. This SEO strategy is still being executed, but we have already seen important gains in organic search results for several search terms. Recently, The Client again asked "what next?" with their sights set on entering into the space of social media.
The next phase in the overall strategy for The Client was taking the business intelligence learned from successful PPC and SEO implementation and applying it into the space of social media. Sometimes, depending on what industry you are looking to engage with, simply setting up a Facebook page or a Twitter handle is not a priority for a client. After all, you cannot fit a square peg into a round hole. With The Client being in a niche industry, there simply was not enough chatter or interest on Facebook or Twitter to warrant developing a strategy. Therefore, we researched alternative, more relevant opportunities in the social media space for The Client to engage with.
After meeting with key stakeholders and discussing goals, we were able to conclude that the next logical step was for The Client to begin a blog. A blog strategy presented the best opportunity to base conversation in the social media space around learnings from search marketing. Why? Because through search marketing, we are able to pinpoint what inspires potential customers to engage with the company. The Client will be able to create engaging conversations based around these learnings through a blog. They will be able to reach their target audience, reach industry influencers who act as information-hungry word of mouth propellers, as well as comment on other niche blogs, message boards and forums.
As it was with search marketing five years ago, social media marketing today poses a conundrum for brands - they realize that they should probably participate in the space, but are unclear how to enter in and achieve success. For a company like The Client, calculated steps and a logical progression from search engine marketing to social media marketing proved to be the best strategy. The calls to action that have worked best through SEO and PPC now act as a road map for content creation we know will be relevant to prospects, customers and influencers in the social media space.
Has anyone else had success transitioning learnings from search engine marketing into social media? Have any questions or comments? Leave them here!
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Posted on April 17, 2008
Web Time Travel - Going Wayback for Optimization
BY BEN CASTELLI
I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with the WaybackMachine over at archive.org which allows you to browse through 85 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. While it may be fun to see how far Apple has come in the past 11 years or how little McDonald's (holy redness!) has come, there are actually some practical website optimization and search visibility insights that can be gained from using the tool.
First off let's talk about website optimization. By using the Wayback Machine you can see a timeline of web design, navigation, content, on page seo etc… over the sites history. Coupled with website analytics (like bounce rate) and conversion data over the same period, you are able to get an idea of what worked and what didn't. For example, we recently had a pay per click client who had periods of strong online conversions several years ago, however were unable to get back up to that level in recent months.
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Posted on December 3, 2007
Google Visibility Tools via GoDaddy
BY JASON CORMIER
One of our clients, Strategic Media, forwarded an interesting email they received from GoDaddy over the weekend announcing access to Google's Webmaster Tools. If you are a GoDaddy hosting customer, you can now access Google's Webmaster Tools through your account control panel.
Why is this valuable? In a nutshell, using Google's Webmaster Tools is a basic but important part of optimizing your website for high search visibility. Not only do you gain insight to how Google crawls your pages, but also how search queries are driving traffic.
All of our Seach Visibility clients have a Google Webmaster account we access through a central location. Giving hosting customers a direct way to do this through an area where they already administer email, stats and other functions was a smart move by GoDaddy.
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Posted on June 14, 2007
Content Management vs Content Visibility
BY JASON CORMIER
Lately, we keep running into all of these web development opportunities. It is my nature to not want to say no to any of them, but the reality is web development projects demand a great deal of customized time. When I say “customized time” I mean the kind that isn’t easily replicated. The kind not everyone on the team can just learn and do.
With all this potential development talk, I always find it fascinating how people gravitate to the discussion of content management as such an important need for their websites. Not to argue completely against this, but let’s be real: the focus should be more about content visibility.
I hear James saying in some of our prospecting meetings, “if a tree falls in the forest, who knows about it?” If your website is updated, who knows about that… and when? Do you think people are actively visiting your site to see if there are any updates? Hope not.
If you do think it’s important for people to know when an update to your website is done, then you need RSS. Come to think of it, if you believe it’s important people can find your content using a search engine, you need RSS. If you think it’s important to keep your job as a marketing or public relations professional, then you need (go ahead, your turn).
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Posted on September 7, 2006
Strategic Linking from Dave Taylor
BY JASON CORMIER
My friend and colleague Dave Taylor, who writes several popular weblogs on technology and business, today posted an intriguing article to his free Blogsmart News e-mail newsletter: "Linking as a Way to Drive Links."
You have to subscribe to that e-mail list in order to see this article (it's in the archives), but here's the gist of it.
On Sept. 6, Dave posted a blog entry about Hewlett Packard: Dunn follows in Fiorina's footsteps as HP implodes yet again. This business story includes links to related postings by three other bloggers: Valleywag, Paul Kedrosky, and Robert Scoble. He found these related postings with a simple Techmeme search -- but for non-tech topics, more general feed aggregation services like Technorati would work just as well.
The Payoff: Dave wrote, "While I was sleeping, top blogger Robert Scoble was reading through my article and then updating his own blog entry to include a link back to mine: 'UPDATE 2: Dave Taylor, who worked at HP with both Hewlett and Packard, [gives us the historical context] behind why this can be traced back to Carly Fiorina¹s time running HP.'"
Links from A-list bloggers inevitably bring lots of traffic to a site or blog. They also help build constructive relationships with more established individuals, communities, or organizations. Plus, linking directly to related posts or sites positions your contribution to the public conversation as a resource, not a mere pontification. That means that content probably will attract more links and more traffic over time, since it serves as a gateway to an array of information, or to the historical record.
Dave also notes: "The ''trackback' system is supposed to let bloggers know when others cite their works, but many blog authors -- myself included -- ignore trackbacks. If you're really eager for a link back from an authority, it might be worth sending a two line email message notifying them of your article and inviting them to read it at their convenience."
He's right about trackbacks. -- on all my blogs, I've gotten so overwhelmed with trackback spam ("spings") that I've just turned off trackbacks. I hate it when a good conversational tool gets co-opted and trashed by spammers, but that's inevitable.
He's also right about e-mailing bloggers to let them know you've linked to them. As a matter of fact, I'm going to do that right now.... Yo, Dave...
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