**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!

If that doesn't tell you how seriously he takes his tweeting, consider this: Someone asked him if he was affected by Twitter's outage a few weeks ago, he responded by asking if that person was affected by waking up in the morning.

The man follows 30,000+ people, so he of course does not see every tweet. However, Hammer has several huge monitors at home so that he can see as much Twitter activity as possible. In fact, while promoting one of his projects, he randomly saw a negative comment come into his stream. Rather than letting it be, and letting the negativity grow unchecked, Mr. Hammer decided to inject his opinion into the conversation. The negative commenter, was basically blown away that Hammer paid enough attention to his stream to catch his comment. The negativity ended there.

To sum everything up, MC Hammer cares (A LOT). It has helped him to build a Twitter following of 1.5 million (give or take a few hundred thousand.

The point I am attempting to make is that social media is not a set and forget process. You have to dedicate a lot of time and effort into building connections. If you aren't willing to put in the time to make the little connections, nobody is going to want to connect with you.

This time and effort is so important that it can encompass your very being as in MC Hammer's case. But the payoffs will come back to you in ways you never thought could happen.

There is an excerpt of his keynote below:

What knowledge does your organization have that can add value to the conversation?

What assets can you produce that are exciting and engaging to the groups gathering around a subject?

Approaching Social Media with a traditional online marketing mindset which is drive toward some conversion can be dangerous.

Too many companies look at the power and leverage of social media and start asking what can they get out of it, rather than considering what they can do to add value to it.

Finding The Right Approach

The idea is find the common interest threads that run through your audiences and then create content that appeals more on an emotional level then a product or service level.

What does this mean? It means losing the marketing speak about features, benefits and services and going to the places where the consumers have passion and providing support and input on those passions. I wrote a recent article on the theory of engaging in consumer "passion threads" and believe tremendously in the idea of getting out of the market segmentation business and getting into the passion business.

This is essentially taking the idea of sponsorship and social causes and creating an authentic social media conversation around the passions your potential consumers are pursuing.

To create a viral campaign, one needs to understand the emotional triggers, cool factor and belief behind a project or program.

Make The Assumption That All Employees Are Involved In Social Media

Now ask yourself, would the company's employees voluntarily reach out to their own networks to promote a cause, campaign or event the company has put marketing efforts behind? If not, then you need to ask yourself: Why not? Even better ask your employees why not. Find out what could the company do to motivate them to tell their friends, share an application, attend an event or promote a cause?

Be Creative

Consumers want original, authentic and entertaining content to engage with. By understanding what their passions are you will be more likely to create content that inspires and invokes action. This means you might be producing content that is not only about your product or services, but connects with your customers on an emotional level.

It could be as simple as a great Facebook application, a podcast series, man-on-the-street videos, or sponsorship of local ride naked events. Be careful with that last idea.