Yeah! That’s right Y’all. Our very own SEO Chick Lisa Myers is making this morning’s social keynote.
Microsoft’s Mel Carson: Advertising Community Manager is our MC.
Mel sets us up for the session by explaining they like to think of social media not just as platform, but as marketing tool. It’s important to remember it’s not all just about Twitter and Facebook, but about finding your audience and where they hang out.
Apparently 21% of FB traffic comes from IM. So shared content, is the pull and such stats act as carrot to businesses who often jump in, looking for an instant win. It takes dedication, committment for reward.
Get the basics right!
Lisa starts by stressing this is a 101 and we start with a definition.
Technical platform that facilitates connection. HOWEVER, just being there is not enough. Presence is not the success factor in social media.
Speed by which social media faciliates communication, can be understood b a move from word of mouth to WORLD of mouth.
The key to participation is to listen first – sell later (if at all). SM is not a traditional “sales” tool. Much more below the line relationship sales.
Lisa Plays… Social Media Revolution
Which contains some awesome facts about social media growth, user numbers, frequency of access, and some metrics about the decline of the traditional news media industries.
We’re moving onto looking at the core of social media strategies; The Social Media Elements…
Content marketing, Link Baiting, Site Seeding, ORM and Monitoring, Blogging, Viral and Social Media Networks.
Start With an Objective.
Example: brand awareness, traffic generation, link generation, conversions.
Identify Your Audience.
Who are they and where are they? Doesn’t need to be obsessively detailed as most social medium’s reach some range of audience.
Blogging
200,000,000 blog out there in the interwebosphere, of which 54% post content of some sort DAILY. 34% of whom post product and service OPINION.
Identify your bloggersphere and factor outreach into social strategy.
Allow your own blog to develop a personality. Make sure the blog is designed with the contributors in mind. Easy enough for the CEO to use.
Think about who is blogging, who is managing, what topic and style?
Checklist before you start.
Main topics and categories; who are the bloggers, who is the manager.
Then build out content and relationships accordingly. Consider personality and how this drives content and profile. (Lisa is showing everyone our freakin’ mugshots. LOL) Good point though as all the Chicks have pretty strong social profiles, and can be traced throughout social media including other blogs, Twitter, guest posting, our own company blogs, FB, and the rest.
A Few Favourite Plugins for WordPress
- Tweetmeme (make it easy)
- Sexybookmarks
- Allinone SEO Pack
- Post avatar
- Vodpod
Social SEO
So much material here, as there are inextricable linkes between the two disciplines. Don’t ringfence them as you will get much greater benefit by comining strateguies and knowledge.
One way to think about it – the Linkerati (who any SEO will be grateful for) are the same people we would consider to be the “Socialerati”.
Linkbaiting = a piece of content designed to be attractive so that it is linked to. Remember it has to be on your domain. Viral content can be off-site, but it can not be considered to be linkbait. Linkbait can gain viral popularity though.
Viral
You can’t “create” a viral. Viral is the spread mechanism not the content type. It can be difficult to control or predict content the “goes viral”.
Must be a creative idea with solid execution elements.
All the tweeting, digging etc will not help a shit idea. Or flash content for example.
Lisa got her first client through Twitter! (Moi aussi).
Top tips… don’t overthink it. say it, share it, be normal, be natural.
LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN!
This is a two way process and going into it with this mental attitude, you may find you get more out than you put in!
Remember #hashtags add great additional value for grouping and organisation, search and content retrieval.
Twitter lists are a great tool.
Tweetdeck and other third party apps allow for ease of access, multi-account management. Some allow for scheduling Tweets e.g. Hootsuite, and FutureTweets.
Free Social Monitoring Tools for Twitter
www.socialmention.com
www.tweetbeep.com
www.tweepmeme.com
www.klout.com
www.blogpulse.com
Paid Monitoring Tools
www.trackur.com
www.radian6.com
Good for spreading the word, linkbuilding, campaign specific and brand perspective.
Fan page pros- indexed, vanity URLs Twitter and blog integration, member stats.
Cons – can’t message all, no post notifications, can’t bulk invite.
Group Pros, bulk invites, DM all members, pre-approve members.
Cons – Not indexed, lose message feature
YouTube: Launching own keyword monitoring and data tools. 2nd biggest global search engine, with it’s own algorithm.
Final point…
INTEGRATE!!!
Integrate your social media, with each other, integrate your strategy, so that it interconnects and flows through.
CASE STUDY: City Inn Advent calendar
(Please refer to the presentation that Lisa will be posting as this is a brilliant and highly effective campaign. )
Micro-site advent calendar with click on each of the 24 days, revealing a great prize e.g. iPhones, 2 tickets to “Strictly” final.
Campaign promoted through Twitter, site, blogs other social media.
Generated equivalent 50% of average monthly traffic
Increased email database considerably
300 more Twitter followers (from starting point of handful).
In summary from Lisa:
Don’t let the stats fool you. If it’s too good to believe it probably is. Think, before you go, and trust your instinct.
Live example. We’re about to do a funky live example social media activity. Which will be going on www.stateofsearch.com and Twitter with #sessocial
Lastly, as Lisa promised, here’s her slide deck from the session (including links etc):
Lisa was also interviewed after the session by Mel Carson and the SES YouTube Channel, here’s her thoughts of the Social Media Tidalwave (and feel free to laugh at the ridiculous “freeze frame”)