By Lee Odden, CEO TopRank Online Marketing
The search marketing industry is awash with buzz about social media. While many pundits segment search marketing and social media as distinct marketing channels, they do in fact, have a significant impact on each other. This post discusses how search marketing is affected by social media.
The growth in attention to social media as a marketing, communication
and community building opportunity deserves attention by all sorts of
online marketers, especially those in search marketing.
How does social media affect search marketing?
Searcher expectations have changed. - Searchers no
longer have the sole expectation of searching to find information for a
specific outcome. As people spend more and more time connecting,
sharing and interacting with the social web, they now often expect to
interact with what they find in the search results.
Searchers have always been able to save the useful things they find
in search results by bookmarking or saving to the favorites in the
browser. Bookmarks are now social, to be shared and leveraged via the
collective wisdom of preferences from other likeminded searchers. The
growth and popularity of socially enabling web applications (social
bookmarks, news, networking, messaging, publishing & media sharing)
drive consumer expectations for social interaction with search even
more.
Another aspect to searcher expectations is that consumers search
social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo Answers, MySpace) to a
small degree, as an alternatives to standard search for information,
references and recommendations. People don’t trust formal marketing
messages and there is something inherently more trustworthy about
recommendations made by others willing to take the time to review
products/services and share their opinions. Marketers realize this of
course and as a result, there has been an increase in the number of
“fake” reviews on ecommerce sites.
So, how do searcher expectations in regards to social
media affect SEO efforts? Does it affect landing pages for PPC or other
online search advertising?
Keywords and links aren’t the only tactics SEOs employ with content
optimization. Usability comes into play as well and making it easy for
consumers of a web site’s content to socially save, share, submit and
interact with that content helps meet increasing social expectations.
With PPC and landing pages it’s the same thing, but not to the
degree that it takes away from the objective of the conversion of
course. The objective for a landing page is to motivate a specific
action, not bookmark the landing page - but why not make it easy if
customers choose to do so?
With online advertising, there are increasing numbers of companies
enabling rich media ads with social features. Links are added so that
viewers of the ad can share, rare or comment. This isn’t practical with
text based PPC ads but with video or graphical ads used in search, it
might be something to consider.
Difference in Context of Search and Social -
It’s important to understand the difference in how/why people spend
time searching compared to time spent with social media. This is an
area I am looking for more research on, so please share links if you
have them. Fundamentally, a searcher has a question, unmet need or pain
point to be solved and initiates action through a query on a search
engine. The result is being presented with matching search results
& ads. Depending on the searcher’s stage in the research process or
buying cycle, they’ll drill down to a solution or continue searching.
Time spent with the social web involves many types of interactions
with likeminded individuals in a community or network, one of which is
looking for and sharing recommendations. As I mentioned earlier, people
do not tend to trust formal marketing messages. While it’s the goal for
search engines and search advertisers to make their ads more useful and
relevant to searchers, that is not always the case. The investment in
time with a social community, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook or
LinkedIn, along with the quality of interactions builds trust that’s
difficult to duplicate in online advertising as we know it.
How can marketers’ efforts in social media channels do a
better job of going beyond applying the same old rules and take on more
of a give to get strategy?
This is where the give to get principle comes in. Effective social
advertising is less about attaching marketing messages to content and
more about being the content. This isn’t new in advertising or direct
marketing when you think about it. TV commercials and direct mail as
entertainment and art have been popular for years. The difference is
that marketing online is so ingrained with advertisers and marketers as
a direct marketing channel, they don’t yet understand the opportunities
from building community, creating something of value that persists and
not just as a campaign, as a way to communicate their message.
Rather than looking at social media sharing sites as just another
place to dump their existing content, online marketers should consider
understanding what is important to social communities through content,
link and tag analysis (a keyword based listening exercise) and create
content that meets those needs. The content created can add to the SEO
efforts for search based discovery as well as through the social web.
Push and Pull SEO Effect of Social Media Marketing.
Social media marketing efforts that create conversations and buzz can
influence queries on keywords used in search the same way advertising
and the result of public relations through media coverage can drive
search traffic.
In social web situations, a great idea can spread quickly, driving
people to search for more formal information. The push is the
instigation of a new concept in social media situations, providing
useful information and provoking discussions about it. The pull
(searching for) comes from the idea catching fire and people searching
for more information on it.
Another aspect to the push and pull effect involves content that is
created by marketers and/or discussions that come out of a social media
marketing effort that can also rank in the search results. Creating
socially enabled content that is optimized for keywords phrases with
established demand allows a brand, product or company to occupy
multiple positions on the same search query. By socially enabling that
content with save/share/comment features, marketers facilitate
distribution within social communities.
Here, the push is the creation of optimized content that includes
features to make it easier to travel within social communities. So many
people are empowered to link to content on the web through blogging,
commenting on blogs, user generated content and reviews that the
optimized content can achieve desired visibility within standard search
engines. The pull comes from people searching standard search engines
for things they need and finding the optimized content.
Social media affects search marketing in many ways - what's important for marketers is to understand how and plan campaigns to take advantage of both.
