All posts tagged social media optimization
Addressing Client Expectations
How do smaller online marketing firms maintain the edge in their hyper-competitive industry? There are probably a thousand different answers to that question, and in reality, it is a combination of many factors. But while experience, knowledge, and a passion for delivering client success are important, customer-centricity remains one of, if not the biggest, factor.
One of the biggest trends sweeping online business today is for companies to focus an increasing amount of their attention and resources on customer service and customer experience. We see this both within our clients’ industries as well as our own, and the pace is only increasing. For this reason, we were happy with the results of our most recent client survey. Our clients’ feedback illustrated the fact that paying constant, close attention to their needs and desires, coupled with round-the-clock availability, is of the utmost importance.
Respected online marketer and blogger, Nick Stamoulis’ recent post on setting expectations for potential clients brings up a few good points as well. Once you start working with a client, their needs, obviously, take precedence, and part of delivering premier customer care is taking whatever time is necessary to make that happen. But before the contact is signed and a potential client is inquiring about your services, you can’t sacrifice too much of your precious time (and at a small online marketing firm, time is very precious) answering questions and giving advice. He outlines three general rules that are good for businesses seeking online consulting services to remember during the initial stages:
1) Don’t go looking for free advice This may seem self-evident, but it can be surprisingly common. Of course, this doesn’t mean that online marketers should be dismissive or rude, but rather that we can’t properly do our jobs without access to a client’s analytics, AdWords accounts, and other pertinent data. So it’s best for both parties to wait until the contract is signed before consulting.
2) Don’t expect me to drop everything to call you back This can be tricky, but when forging a relationship with a client, you want to show that you’re willing to go the extra mile for them, but without neglecting your current clients. Stamoulis has had prospects call several times a day, and expect their voicemails and emails to be answered within the hour – and that just isn’t realistic.
3) Don’t second guess your instinct This roughly translates to not wasting your time and the marketing firm’s time by unnecessarily drawing out the vetting process. Be decisive, if your gut tells you that this firm is a good fit for your company, then go for it. Besides, the sooner you get started with your new SEO, PPC, and SMO campaigns, the sooner you’ll start to reap the benefits.
Less Is More with Social Media Strategy…
Courtesy urbn.com
Is it really good business practice to get on the bandwagon just because everyone else is doing it? Like a moth to a flame, you will end up losing more time and resources by blindly following the latest marketing trend. Resist the urge, and instead, devote yourself to articulating your product and brand strategy – what it is and what it is not.
1) Test and measure your needs Here, the old adage applies, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” As of now, what social media channels are you working with? Active channels only. Dead accounts with profiles but no activity don’t count. Say your company has a presence with a consistent blog and Twitter that is managed by your CEO. That’s not a bad start. First, can you measure which of these is either 1) creating online dialogue or 2) creating leads or partnerships (these metrics are more telling than the simple follower or fan count). For the latter, those will take time to quantify – a year or more! With these results, you might even find that you can eliminate one that isn’t producing or redirect to a new audience, find a professional writer, etc. If your audience likes re-tweeting quick and easy micro-blogs, no need to spend hours writing blog posts.
2) Assess your resources and prioritize The caveat to your toolkit is “Don’t bite off more than you can chew.” No need to give in to peer pressure and create a blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube channel, Tumblr, etc, etc all at once if you can’t create and manage enough (useful) content for them all. How big is your marketing team? One full-time person? Three part-time contractors? An intern?
First rule – don’t make it harder than it is! You don’t want to over-manage too many outlets and duplicate content that you can streamline. For instance, Facebook is getting better with automatically integrating website blogs into their feed.
3) Creator vs. Contributor Your marketing efforts should reflect a healthy balance between “creator” and “contributor” – meaning you should generate content for your own blog while writing guest post for blogs on partner sites (and linking the two!). Your platform for doing so will also be determined by length – from short tweets, to tumblr photo or FB status updates, to full-length blogs and articles. These tasks will become much more manageable if you outline these posts in a calendar. If your industry is particularly volatile or fast-paced – do this every two weeks or so – but if not, every month or quarter will do. That does not mean scripting out tweets 10 days in advance (but that’s okay too!), but having a theme in mind for a fixed period will give your feed focus and add credibility to your expertise. For those of you with promotions and peak sale seasons, opt for focused banner and ad space with external expert bloggers in your industry. io9.com, a blog for sci-fi geeks(and its sister sites and themes managed under gawker.com) displays ads for related television specials and movie trailers. Foodgawker.com, a crowd-sourced “feast for the eyes” has cleverly placed adds buried amongst their appetizing photos.
The overall message is not to succumb to the pressures of creating pages and pages of content – but rather implementing a well-rounded presence online on diverse platforms.
5 Ways Social Media Optimization Compliments SEO
We’ve all heard a lot about search engine optimization (SEO) and the impact it can have for business. Having a well crafted and thoughtful SEO campaign can be the difference between running a thriving business or being left behind by your competitors. While the importance of SEO is easy to measure and understand, it’s not as easy to grasp the importance of establishing a complimentary social media optimization campaign (SMO). Social media optimization’s importance to business can be found not only in its ability to reach new audiences and promote content, but in its ability to compliment SEO. Simply put, not having a complimentary social media optimization plan means leaving money on the table. Below are five key ways in which social media optimization can compliment SEO and can help business’s improve search rankings.
1. User Generated Content:
Having active user communities on your site in the form of blogs, forums, or other types of social media allows users to contribute content, including important variations of site specific keywords. User generated content is not only cost effective, but highly prized as a source by search engines. It is organic and often has a higher level of “trust” in online communities, which in turn lends itself to being more credible to search engines.
When engaging with user communities, it’s important for the business’s social manager to become a fixture in the communities the business interacts with. Ideally, the social manager engages in discussion not only to foster goodwill, but to keep content fresh and updated. These conversations in turn help SEO, as quality content is not only engaging but easy to share, and that helps increase search rankings through increased page content and links to your site.
2. Link Building:
Social media is an extremely powerful tool for link building and creating both direct and indirect links. A direct link is created from the platform directly (links in a comments box on a blog, profile links in comments on Facebook, etc) while indirect links are created by bloggers, webmasters, or others who find and share your content indirectly (this can be through other blogs re-posting the content or adding re-shared content to another social medium). Link creation of this manner is essential due to social media’s propensity to spread compelling content in a viral manner. The more links that are cultivated through social media, the more a business will improve its search ranking.
3. Brand Related Search:
New metrics available for social media have determined that an increasing number of brand related searches originate on a social media outlet. These can be a fan page, review, or recommendation made through a friend, and in-turn searched by someone in their social circle. Consumers see these outlets as the new “front window” of a business and use them to take a peek inside the store to see if its worth their time to investigate further. Do their friends like it? Is the business socially responsible? Do they have an interesting product line? Consumer’s are using social media to answer these questions and conduct brand related searches.
4. Ranking:
Search engines rankings are valuing social media more every day. Factors such as comments, ratings, shares and other social metrics determine how valuable the search engines view content across social circles. Google +1 goes even further by tailoring your specific search results based on who in your social circle has “+1’d” the content, and how relevant that reviewer is to you. Therefore, if a friend has “+1’d” a business, your search results for a similar business or product will show that same business much higher in rankings than if they had not “+1’d” the business. Simply put, the more relevant that members of your social circles find the content, the more likely it is to rank highly on your search results. Combining a strategy to encourage customers to share, like, or +1 a business’s content with a solid SEO strategy can greatly increase a businesses search rankings through relatively little work.
5. Reputation Management:
Utilizing as many social media outlets as possible gives you more opportunity to have more of your products on the first page taking up more real estate. Because content taken from social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg etc. ranks so highly on search engines, it becomes easier for your business to take up more of the first page. Ideally, when a brand is searched, their Facebook, Blog, and Twitter should all rank on the first page along with their home website. Increasing mediums through which a business represents itself online gives it a tremendous opportunity to take up lots of prime real estate on the first page.
While there is tremendous opportunity, there are also many pitfalls that the social media manager needs to be aware of, such as negative sentiment being spread. This reality makes the social media managers job of monitoring conversations even more important. With more channels comes more conversations, and with more conversations the possibility of negative conversations getting out of control increases. The social media manager needs to make sure they stay tuned into their communities and address any negative content swiftly and in an open manner. As positive content and conversations increase, so do search rankings which makes it all the more important to vigilantly manage your businesses reputation via social media.
Search engine optimization continues to evolve and change in a constant attempt to gives consumers the highest quality and most relevant results to a search possible. As consumer habits evolve its important for a business to evolve with them as well to ensure that they retain their current customer base while attracting new customers as well. By adopting a complimentary search engine optimization and social media optimization plans, a business can ensure that they are staying on the cutting edge of consumer trends and demands. Any successful optimization campaign starts with a plan and goals. Keeping the above points in mind when establishing a complimentary optimization plans is key, and by using them as guidelines to establish goals a business can ensure that it stays relevant to its consumers and successful in the long term.
