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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 July 22, 2008
Room 214 Hosts Startup Drinks this Thursday!
BY STEPAN MAZUROV
Hey everyone I would like to remind all of our readers and friends that we'll be hosting Boulder Startup Drinks this Thursday, July 24th from 5pm till the Keg is gone. Come and talk about your startups, discuss word of mouth marketing, SEO, blogging and podcasting or anything thats in your heart. Beer is free so come by and say hi! The address is 3200 Carbon Pl Ste 103, Boulder CO 80301. If you have trouble getting here and need directions call me at (303) 444-9214 x 105. See you there!
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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 February 6, 2007
Google Webmaster Console Now Showing Backlinks
BY JAMES CLARK
As of yesterday, the Google webmaster console now provides backlink data. The results are vastly improved over the link: command although as Matt Cutts states "the backlink tool doesn't show 100% of the backlinks from Google yet, but I expect the number of links that are available to grow."
We get into the link building conversation quite frequently as it is still a major factor in how Google ranks a website, BUT and it's a big BUT, we don't like anything that has to do with a link exchange, buying links or any auto-generated link building programs.
Our advice is simple: get active in publishing great content (blogging, podcasting, syndicating press rooms), syndicate your content through RSS, track the conversation online, post comments on other's blogs and actively participate in discussion groups.
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