Five Easy Steps to Achieve Social SEO

Five Easy Steps to Achieve Social SEO

Posted on: February 12, 2013 | Social

Social media has proven to be a powerful tool for marketing because of the environment it creates. Social media thrives on the interaction of people, on communicating with each other, establishing new connections, and on sharing content. It is every marketer’s dream and it’s natural for marketing professionals to take advantage of social media as another avenue to bring its message across to people.

The impact of social media has become very significant that search engines give a lot of authority to positive social media activity – tweets, retweets, likes and Google +1s; and whatever search engines set their sights on, expect search engine optimization experts to be one step behind.

Social SEO is becoming an important part of not just SEO strategy but also digital marketing because social media activity now carries a lot weight and it is also one of the most effective ways of disseminating content to a wider audience.

So how do you achieve social SEO? Here are five ways you can do it:

Create meaningful content

I believe the be-all and end-all of social SEO lies in content. Although you can attract people to visit your site because of snazzy web design or a cool promo, there’s no way you can make them stay if you don’t engage them with content that is interesting, thought-provoking, and, yes, even controversial. Take the time to think up of content you want to create for your website, taking into consideration your audience and what you think they will want to read. You can take advantage of various analytics tools to get a feel for what people are talking about and find out what topics are heating up the internet.

Creating compelling content is the first step. But you have to make sure that the content you create is one that people will want to share with their social connections. This is easier said than done so do your research, use analytics data and be aware of what’s happening in the world. Staying constantly informed is crucial if you want to develop content that is timely and interesting.

Allow opportunities to easily share content

Now that you’ve engaged people what you want them to do is to share that content to their own social connections. Make it easier for people to share your content by providing them with various social share buttons and other social plugins on each article page. Sharing content should be extremely easy for the reader so they won’t have any reason not to share it with their own networks. You need to ensure that you increase the chances of your content being shared because it helps build your online presence, strengthens your authority and increases your page ranking.

Establish your social media presence

You need to make your own ripples in the social media space that’s why you need to create and nurture your own social media presence. Your social network pages will serve as your platforms for publishing and sharing content. Make sure that all of the social network pages you create are always abuzz with activity by posting messages, sharing images and other content and engaging people who like and visit your page.

There is an ongoing debate on whether you should create a presence in all social networks or just target social networks that will have a bearing on your brand. For example, if your brand is purely consumer-related, do you really need a LinkedIn social presence? It is my opinion that it won’t hurt your branding to have accounts in various social networks because it is really all in the matter of how you will utilize that network. Let’s take LinkedIn, for example. Even if you have a consumer brand, you can still set up a LinkedIn company page that can help grow your company following. There are also various features in LinkedIn that you can explore to entice your target market even if they are in LinkedIn. It’s really just a matter of perspective and knowing how to turn something into an opportunity.

Engage your audience through your social media presence

Put the social in social media by engaging your audience. Social networks are the great equalizer, allowing the consumer to speak to big corporations on an even playing field. Being able to communicate with your audience is an opportunity that you should take advantage. Answer questions, make replies to comments and provide information to your audience. When your audience sees that there are people behind your brand and that they really care, expect brand loyalty to follow.

Engaging your audience also means implementing various marketing strategies to deepen their investment on your brand. Run various promos and contests from within your social network and watch your numbers go up.

Do you know that the mere act of liking the posts of people who have subscribed to your Facebook page is a great step towards building a stronger relationship with your audience? Try it.

Share content through your social networks

As I have previously mentioned, use your social network presence to share content. Showing that your social network presence is active is a reassurance to your audience. Have you ever visited the social account of a company that hasn’t updated their Facebook page in almost year? You probably have felt that the company has either closed down or has been extremely sloppy with their social presence. Either way, it’s a negative perception and one that you wouldn’t want for your own brand. So keep all of your social network accounts active.

Share your content across your social networks to ensure that you provide maximum social media coverage. You want your content to reach as many people as possible and you can do this by tapping the different connections you’ve made in Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. Remember that you create unique connections for each social network because people use social networks differently – some prefer one over the other. Covering all your bases ensures that your content will reach more people. You want your content to go viral and this is how you can do it.

These are just five basic tips that can help you achieve social SEO. These tips can help you take that first step towards implementing a social SEO strategy for your business or company. But its simplicity can be deceiving. Social SEO requires a lot of time, work and effort to make it work. That’s why many businesses look to digital marketing companies like AllFamous Digital to take care of their social SEO needs. You need the assistance of experts to craft an effective social SEO strategy that will meet your objectives.

Social SEO Insights for the New Age of Search

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Daniel Cristo | 1 comment

The views of contributors are their own, and not necessarily those of SEJ.

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“Suddenly the fingers of a man’s hand emerged and began writing opposite the lampstand on the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace, and the king saw the back of the hand that did the writing. Then the king’s face grew pale and his thoughts alarmed him, and his hip joints went slack and his knees began knocking together.”

The Famous Writing on the Wall…

It was King Belshazzar of Babylon whose knees began knocking when he saw the handwriting on the wall. After the interpretation was given, “God has numbered your kingdom and put an end to it,” it was that same night that his kingdom was taken over by Darius the Mede.

Many SEOs can relate to Balshazzar. We’ve spent the last 15 years building an industry around keywords, tags, and links, but Google has made clear the old kingdom is coming to an end, and a new regime is here.

Defining Social SEO

For lack of a better name, we’ll call this new world, “Social SEO.” It’s not a great name, because parts of SEO have been social for a long time, but this is the first time that social signals have been considered a primary ranking factor. Let’s look at what that means, and how it came about.

Changing the System

At first, Facebook’s social graph was merely a way of showing how popular someone was. I have 50 friends, and you have 250 friends. Why would that matter to a search engine? It matters because friendships are based on trust, and search engines use trust as a signal for quality. If you think a page is useful, and I trust you as a person, there’s a good chance that I’ll think the page is useful as well.

As the social graph matured, the search engines realized its usefulness, and began including social signals in their algorithms. Danny Sullivan from SearchEngineLand confirmed this with Google and Bing in 2010.

This means that SEOs must adjust their strategy, and come up with new ways to optimize these new relationship signals. To help you understand Social SEO in greater detail and to capitalize on the associated new opportunities this presents to you as a marketer, you can find a list of five insights into Social SEO as follows:

Insight 1: Where Are the Signals Coming From?

In June of 2012, SearchMetrics put out research showing the correlation between social activity’s and search rankings in Google. The study showed that activity from Facebook and Twitter correlates very strongly with high rankings in Google. The study looked at Google+, but at the time Google+ was less than a year old. Since then, Google has placed significant emphasis on their homegrown social network, and I’m sure this year’s study will reflect that.

From those findings, and our own intuition, we conclude there are four social networks search engines rely on for their signals: Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Insight 2: Why YouTube?

Most people think Google+ is simply a social network like Facebook. What they don’t realize is that Google+ is actually of a system for collecting and displaying social data across all of Google’s products, including their social network.

At the core of most of the products that Google creates is a search bar: Chrome, Android, Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube—you name it. Search is the factor that makes Google’s products better than their competitors. Google+ is important, because it’s a layer of social Google wants to incorporate across its entire portfolio.

For example, let’s say I’m planning a road trip across the United States. I start mapping out my route using Google Maps. Wouldn’t it be great if I could see the routes my friends have taken on their road trips, landmarks they’ve stopped at, and restaurants they’ve enjoyed eating at? Google+ was designed to deliver that social experience to Google Maps. But in order to deliver that personalized experience, Google needs to know who you are, who your friends are and what things you like.

Google+ goes beyond just displaying a personalized experience within its suite of products; it also collects data from them.

For example, let’s say you like Rainn Wilson’s videos on YouTube so much that you decide to subscribe to his SoulPancake channel. By subscribing, you are joining a group of others who share a common interest: SoulPancake videos. This informal grouping is a signal to Google that you have something in common with others in that group. Google may use that signal to recommend web results it may think you’ll like, based on the fact that others in that group liked it.

Among Google products, YouTube’s popularity and levels of engagement (e.g., 800 million monthly unique visitors, more than 4 billion daily video views, etc.) make it a particularly important source of signal generation, which can then be tied back to your profile and social graph through Google+.

Insight 3: A New Strategy and New Team Roles

New signals require new tactics, and new tactics require new strategies.

Managers who plan on adding a social element to their SEO campaign should evaluate their current resources and team makeup.

A skilled technical SEO may not be the best-suited person to execute a relationship-building campaign. Likewise, a community manager may not enjoy keyword research and data analysis.

There are only a small number of individuals who contain a deep understanding of both SEO and Social. If you have such a person on staff, they should develop and lead your new Social SEO strategy, while specialists in their respective fields execute the tactics.

Insight 4: Adjusted KPIs

Rankings matter very little in a world where everyone sees different search results.

Like traditional SEO campaigns, Social SEO still uses conversions and organic traffic as primary KPIs, but their affinity for rankings has diminished.

Secondary KPIs such as social follower growth, influence scores, and content engagement metrics can act as indicators that the campaign is moving in the right direction, but shouldn’t be given much weight individually.

Google and other analytics providers are starting to recognize the importance of measuring social activities, and have begun to offer reports such as Google Analytics’ Social Assisted Conversions in an effort to tie ROI to social actions.

Rankings, in aggregate, can be useful as another directional measurement, but it means very little on an individual keyword level, especially since Google is hiding a great deal of keyword referral data. However, certain objectives, such as reputation management, may make rank tracking a more important KPI for some.

Insight 5: New Tools of the Trade

Social is a high-touch environment, and requires constant attention. Since attention isn’t scalable, we need technology to scale for us. Here are a few useful tools for your Social SEO campaigns:

• HootSuite: One of the most popular social management platforms, HootSuit allows a team to monitor, analyze, and engage with audiences across multiple social networks simultaneously. The scheduled tweets lets campaign managers queue up messages to be sent automatically at scheduled times.
• IFTTT: A unique, rule-based platform where you can automate activates based on social actions. For example, you can create a rule to email the team whenever someone mentions your brand in a tweet.
• Triberr: A content curation and sharing platform. A team can search for and join relevant industry groups to access a constant stream of fresh content that can be automatically shared with social audiences. Likewise, teams can create and share their own content with their social networks.

Additional Research

The insights listed above are from a newly published eBook from Catalyst, “The Art of Social SEO: Mastering the Art of Social SEO.” I was one of several SEOs who contributed to the project. For additional Social SEO insights, download a free copy of the publication here.

In Closing

There once was a day when SEOs could make a few tweaks to a website, and rankings would improve. Now, we need to tweak the website, create new content, ask others to link to the content, share the content, and comment on it. It is a combined effort from Web development, copywriting, design, PR, influencer marketing, social, and in some cases, paid media (if you need to drive traffic to content for additional engagement).

We can no longer go off to do SEO research, strategy, and tactical execution in a silo. Search engine algorithms are more holistic than ever, and SEOs need to be as well. This is our role in Google’s new kingdom. It’s time we embrace the change, because like King Belshazzar, the writing is on the wall.

How to Use Hashtags in Your Social Media Marketing

By Rachel Sprung
Published February 21, 2013 

Do you use hashtags in your social media marketing?

What if someone else is using the same hashtag about a totally different topic?

Even worse, what if your competitor is using the same hashtag about the same topic?

Before you just throw any word or phrase out there and decide to use it as your hashtag, there are a few things you’ll want to consider to maximize your hashtag’s exposure.

What’s a Hashtag?

A hashtag is a pound sign (#), but it’s also used on Twitter to categorize messages.

According to Twitter, hashtag is defined as follows:

Definition of hashtag from Twitter.

Since the first person used a hashtag in August 2007, they have become one of the most commonly used symbols on Twitter. People use them to organize conversations, tweet at events and engage in conversations online.

But in order to have a successful marketing campaign using a hashtag, you have to know how to pick the right hashtag.

Here are 4 tips for choosing a successful hashtag.

#1: Choose Something Unique

As a marketer, you want to be able to reach your community with the use of hashtags, especially during events, webinars or Twitter chats.

However, if you want others to join in on the conversation and be able to engage with each other, you have to use a hashtag that is more unique—not something as simple as #marketing or #webinar.

Verizon Wireless is a great example of a company that knows how to pick hashtags that will make them stand out in their industry and are also recognizable.

If you search for just #verizon, there are thousands of tweets that appear. Knowing that, Verizon makes sure they pick a more detailed hashtag for their different webinars and chats, such as #VerizonNOLA10 and #VZWINNOVATE.

When you take a look at the results on Twitter for #VZW, you see a very crowded tweet stream. Many people use #VZW when talking about Verizon, so anything they are saying about the company from getting in touch to customer service to commenting on their phone will be picked up in this stream.

Search results for #VZW.

In the picture below, you see the tweet stream for #VZWINNOVATE, which exclusively focuses on Verizon’s participation in Black History Month.

Search Results for #VZWINNOVATE.

By adding the “INNOVATE” to the end of “VZW,” you’re able to understand that the hashtag has to do with Verizon, but also involves a campaign they’re doing.

It’s clear and unique and is not being used by other companies, which is important when differentiating yourself and your social media strategy.

When choosing your hashtag, make sure it is something unique and specific so that it doesn’t get mixed up in other conversations going on.

If you use general terms such as #marketing or #webinars, these updates will appear in the results for everyone using these terms. This can be good, but it also won’t allow your participants to carry on a conversation about one topic.

#2: Choose Something Easy to Remember

When choosing a hashtag, it’s important to make sure that your hashtag is easy for users to remember. With thousands of hashtags roaming the social media universe, the last thing a business wants to do is create a hashtag that is hard to spell or pronounce. Users will end up spelling it wrong and this defeats the purpose of having a hashtag in the first place.

Hashtags should be short, easy to pronounce and spell and give users a better idea about the topic of the conversation or tweet stream.

National television network ABC has a lot of programming, and each show has its own hashtag, allowing people to tweet about the episodes and the actors and actresses.

But ABC is smart and strategic with their use of hashtags. They make sure the hashtags are visible on the website and occasionally have them appear in the bottom corner of the episodes that are playing.

In the case of the show Dancing With the Stars, thousands of people tweet about the different dancers, in addition to the show itself. To bring it all together, ABC promotes the hashtag #DWTS.

It’s simple and easy to remember and will also not take up a lot of space in tweets’ 140-character limit. #DWTS is able to organize everything people are sayingabout their show and engage with their audience, thanks to this hashtag. And fans who are watching the show don’t forget it because it’s so simple.

Search Results for #DWTS.

When choosing your hashtag, consider your objectives for having people come together for the conversation, and also make sure it is easy to remember and understand.

If you have a hashtag that’s too complicated, long or hard to spell, it will defeat the purpose of a hashtag, because people may forget it or may not be able to fit it in their tweets.

#3: Use the Hashtag on Multiple Social Media Channels

As you work toward making your hashtag second nature for many users, try to adopt it on multiple channels.

Although the use of hashtags may have started on Twitter, they are now used across multiple social media channels including Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest.Hashtags allow users to organize their content and pictures while also instilling the hashtag into the minds of their audience.

Take Southwest Airlines, for instance. They held a social media contest for filmmakers to submit their videos for a chance to win prizes. They started off by just using the hashtag on Twitter, but soon adopted it into their other social media channels including Facebook.

Search Results for #SWACinema.

Southwest Airlines using #SWACinema on Facebook.

If people see a hashtag once, it may stick in their minds if it is truly memorable. But most likely it takes a couple times of seeing the hashtag to really remember it.

Use the hashtag on multiple social media channels. This helps you in two ways. First, this gives your hashtag more exposure to more people to help spread the word about it. Second, this helps people to remember your hashtag when they see it multiple times on different channels.

#4: Search for the Hashtag Before You Use It

The worst thing that can happen when using a hashtag is to realize after it’s tweeted that the same hashtag is used for an entirely different topic.

Embarrassing situations can occur if you don’t do your research first. What if the hashtag you’re using has already been used in a discussion about something negative? What if the hashtag is associated with a natural disaster in another country, but you didn’t realize until after you sent your tweet?

Before using a hashtag, you always need to search to see if other people are using it and what they are saying.

Entenmann’s learned this the hard way when they used the hashtag #notguilty to talk about their cookies when other people were using it to talk about Casey Anthony’s#notguilty murder trial verdict.

Entenmann's #notguilty tweet.

They apologized and admitted afterwards that they had not researched what people were saying on the hashtag ahead of time and therefore did not mean to tweet something so insensitive.

Take what Entenmann’s learned as a lesson. Always check what people are saying on particular hashtags before you tweet anything. If you want your tweet to stand out, tweeting on a negative hashtag is not the way to do it.

Use Effective Hashtags in Your Social Media Strategy

When you use hashtags in your social media strategy, the key is to make sure you’re using the right hashtags at the right time to ensure you are reaching your audience in a positive way.

By following these 4 steps, you’ll be able to choose a hashtag that’s memorable and unique. But the most important step of all is to see what other people are saying on that hashtag or topic in advance.

Remember that it’s okay to use general hashtags such as #marketing or #webinars, but it’s harder to make those effective when trying to have a unique conversation.

Use multiple hashtags if the topic is right, but do not add extra hashtags in an attempt to show up in as may searches as possible.

To see what hashtags are being used, visit the hashtag dictionary.

Steal These 3 Social Marketing Tricks From Top Brands

Todd Wasserman7 hours ago

Do you follow a brand in social media? Are you glad you did? If that's the case, they are either doing one of three things:

• Connecting with one of your passions and/or interests.
• Entertaining you with their engaging personality.
• Providing interesting and/or important information to you.

If you're a small business owner, you may want to consider which of the three strategies you're following. You might also mull following one of the strategies exclusively. However, it's fine to dabble in each. "These approaches are interchangeable, and a brand can not only switch back and forth between them, but also use two or three at the same time," says Caitlin Francke, SVP, and Director of Social Strategy at Publicis Kaplan Thaler. "The most important thing is for a brand to stay true to their DNA, identify what they are best at, what they can offer the consumers the most of, and focus on that. That will be their strongest play."

The three strategies — passion, personality and transparency — are outlined below.

1. Passion Brands

No matter how much you like it, it's hard to get worked up about an energy drink. But that drink may be just a part of the optimum experience that you associate with that brand. For example, for some, Red Bull conjures up images of action sports. This is no accident, since the brand has worked hard at tying the brand to images of young people risking their lives on extreme outdoor activities. The cover photo on the brand's Facebook Page, for instance, shows a guy on a snowboard.

Another consistent brand is Nike. Though the brand's social media communication highlights both professional and amateur athletes, the underlying point is the same: celebrating athletic achievement. Adidas' feed is also consistent and differentiated from Nike in its international focus.

Finally, a good example of a passion brand in another category is Whole Foods, whose social media stream consists almost entirely of recipes so fans can indulge their love of cooking and epicureanism.

2. Personality Brands

Not every brand can connect itself to a pastime the way that Nike could. What do you do, for instance, if you're Oreo? Oreo's not associated with much besides milk and perhaps binge-eating. But Oreo and interactive agency 360i aren't interested in connecting Oreo to a particular passion. Instead, they've infused the brand's social media activity with personality. Oreo's 31 million-strong Facebook feed shows the familiar Oreo looking slightly different in the name of a visual pun. The daily updates are sort of a variation on Absolut's long-running ad campaign that featured the bottle against unusual backdrops for the same witty purpose.

Another personality brand is Skittles, which has racked up 24 million followers on Facebook with whimsical, stream-of-consciousness status updates like "The frenemy of my frenemy is my enefriend" and "Beavers are excellent at making pancakes, omelettes and anything that needs a spatula."

3. Transparent Brands

Transparent brands want to tell you about all the stuff that they're doing in the real world. A good example of such a brand is IBM, which hosts some 32,000 individual blogs from its employees and produces a firehose of content about all the technologies it has unleashed on the world.

The transparent positioning seems to be the default for tech brands in social media (well, except for Apple) as Intel, Google and Microsoft all take the same approach. A Feb. 6 Facebook status update from Microsoft, for instance, talked about 4Afrika Initiative, "a new effort through which the company will actively engage in Africa’s economic development to improve its global competitiveness."

Auto brands are also apt to use the transparent approach, as are financial services brands likeFidelity Investments. The strategy seems to work best for brands and categories in which consumers are serious about the information they want but are not necessarily passionate about it. Also, note that passion brands are about activities that a brand is associated with, not for activities the brand actually performs. For instance, Nike makes athletic equipment, not sports, but Ford makes cars and driving is an end to itself.

Francke says following one of the three strategies will help clarify your social media strategy. "In social media, brands need to focus on engaging consumers by offering something of value and capturing their attention," she says. Francke says that new forms of media like Instagram andVine underscore the need to hew to an overall positioning strategy.