real-time marketing in a world of search and social

Real-time Marketing: Connections and Flows

November 9, 2011

iCrossing - Agency services

with clients including…

The web has evolved into a real-time, networked, and synaptic environment

One that is acting more like a digital organism , rather than a

simple set of nodes

Yet many most marketers are still resigned to a passive , rather than

active and agile approach to marketing

While they may be connected, they are not fully alive and present

The current state of this evolution is not so much about “social networks”…

…as it is about hitting a tipping point with

a society that is networked

…exclusion from the network is tantamount to

digital non-existence

Published content is disseminated instantaneously

The fundamental principles of search and network marketing apply

…through active and passive publishing,

there is a profoundly meaningful opportunity to connect

What this means to marketers

• Marketers must act as publishers

• Markets are conversations (thank you Cluetrain)

• “Publishing” is redefined to fit different digital aspects, including conversation

• You have an obligation to dig into data and learn about your target audience

• You have to act in real-time, because it is the nature of the medium

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Real-time marketing

• Thinking like a real-time marketer means being present

• It takes a lot of preparation

• It takes a lot of attention

• Conversations are best addressed while they are happening

• If you don’t have the time, find someone (or a group) in your company who can make time

• Hire somebody (or a group) you can trust to speak on behalf of your company

Just one example of a space where real-time conversations are happening

Community Management

Community Management is real-time, active participa tion within social spaces that goes beyond just sharing content:

• Ongoing listening• Using keyword search, following and monitoring streams, push alerts, etc.

• Establishing search-sensitive social nomenclature and set of behaviors • Converse naturally, but also be aware of major keyword triggers that can help extend your message when

it makes sense

• Pro-actively sharing content based on listening and SEO value• Share and help solve a problem – you benefit in search, and in social

• Making friends, supporting and giving visibility to your Fans and Followers• Show appreciation, and that you are present

• Amplifying content• Use your relevant social networks as a key platform for content distribution (only when it is relevant to the

conversation)

• Building and maintaining relationships with key influencers• This group is like a mouthpiece for your content, and can send distribution into networks of networks

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Paid media placements in social spaces that are often “derivatives” of typical online media placements

Sharing of relevant digital content through various website channels, including distributing to content communities

Starting an ongoing dialogue with consumers by reaching out in their communities and sharing content that is useful, relevant, and portable

Integrating social elements into your website, creating a web experience that meets consumer expectations for sharing content and interacting with other users

Initiatives that seek to build customer dialogueand engagement over time through active community participation and management

Supporting short-term campaigns or promotionsand driving traffic, in conjunction with traditional offline and online media buys

Social media engagement strategy categorization

Content Distribution

Active Outreach

On-site Integration

Community Building

Social Advertising

Description

Increasing exposure for brand or product through continuous distribution of content or “assets” to communities

Building short-term or long-term relationshipswith key influencers online through direct conversations

Establishing your long-term web presence and allowing visitors to share experience with others (this is increasingly a best practice for website development roadmaps)

Creating long-term active relationships with loyal customer base; establishing a “social CRM” or online “focus group” with an embedded value exchange for users

Best Suited For

How do you decide which social space is best for your business?

• Who is your audience?

• Where does your audience congregate and converse?

• Are they on major networks like Twitter or Facebook, or smaller communities better known to your industry?

• How does your audience like to consume content? Images? Video? Blog posts?

Source: Flickr, CC Lic., by SocialGrow

Forums: Thinking outside the major networks

• Identifying forums• Use Google discussion search• Use search to find major networks

CONTENT PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION

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gadgets

blogs

display

sms

email

mobile

womugc

sem

social

feeds

events

desktopkiosk

video

website

instore

widgets

mms

seo

informationassets

contentdata

functionality

Traffic stream types occurring from a social approach

Search traffic streams

Fundamental product of content creation

and promotion(assuming it is crawlable and

indexable)

ex. Google natural search referrals.

Social network traffic streams

Human propagated through social

networks, status updates, content

promotion or citation across

networks

ex. Traffic from links in Twitter or Facebook status.

Keyword trigger feed

“Push” streams

Non-social feeds,alerts, news feeds, push content via

keyword emphasis via email and RSS

ex. Google Alerts, or content matched

on-page via keyword triggered

feed.

Discovery Streams

Channels based on social voting, or

discovery through personalization,

keyword triggers in preferred networks, recommendations,

etc.

Ex. StumbleUpon, Amazon.com

“people who bought”

PopularityStreams

Channels based on popularity of shared or visited

content in through personalization,

recommendations, etc.

Ex. “Most read,” “most emailed,”,

“most recommended”

Becoming a content producer

• Perform in-depth keyword and market research

• Identify types of content to be targeted (videos, images, news, text, etc.)

• Plan to develop containers for the asset types that will be promoted (HTML, feeds, Web site architecture, etc.)

• Develop a detailed content strategy

• Develop a strategic plan for social content dissemination and engagement

• Identify primary and secondary metrics

• Customize dashboards and analytics platforms to accommodate new metrics

• Determine the specific resources needed for content development, deployment and social interaction, based on the scale determined in the strategy

Identifying content asset types to be targeted

• - How-to’s- FAQ’s- Long and short informational articles- Interviews- Documenting events using multiple digital assets- Infographics- Video- Apps- Databases- Answers- Directories, curated link lists- Conversations (commenting, forums, etc.)- White papers- Powerpoint- Reviews- Live and recorded webinars

Keyword demand, conversation demand

• 1) Knowing what your audience is looking for

• 2) Knowing where they seek it out

• 3) Knowing how they communicate

• 4) Knowing which types of digital assets are critical

• 5) Communicating back properly, with the right answer, in the right way, with utmost sincerity, and with a strategic approach in mind

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Finding conversation demand

• "what should I“

• "where do I"

• "how many"

• “I am considering"

• "looking for“

• …or any other phrase that ends in question mark.

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Social’s Impact on Search and SEO

Shift in Linking Measurement: Social impact on SEO

• Links are the cornerstones of natural search algorithms

• But influence of links has shifted greatly from webmasters and technical influencers, to the average Internet user

• As a result, the social graph has taken a massive bite out of the link graph

• Examples of this include:• Tweeting (not a direct link)• Publishing via blog CMS such as

WordPress or Blogger• Rating, commenting, posting• Bookmarking• Etc.

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Link network size expanded through social

Before outreach After outreach

• NetworkSense Map: # nodes indicates instances of a keyword or URL; the larger the node the more inbound links it has• The larger the network, the more mentions, inbound links and traffic point to each node

Meet the Share Graph A new kind of social link graph

• Search engine’s view of sharing activities across the social graph

• Takes into consideration

• Authority of the network sharer• Theme of the user, or related concepts of the network sharer• Depth of the network sharer’s network, and the authority of those in the

network• Trustworthiness of the network sharer (in relation to the likelihood that they

produce spam or low-quality content• Velocity of keyword usage across a network, and the spreading of that

keyword or phrase over time though shared networks• Velocity of link being shared, over time, based on time frequency, volume,

and level that it cascades though various networks

• Kind of like a cross between the link graph and the social graph

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Social relevancy:It’s just common -sense SEO

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Social Relevancy: How engines are looking at Twitter

Consider the parallel aspects of websites, and Twitter accounts

• Domain authority : username authority

• Duplicate content : retweets

• Blogging freshness : content freshness : microblogging freshness

• Links : number of followers

• Quality of links : Quality of followers

• Inbound links vs. outbound links : ratio of followers in contrast to the number of people followed

• Linking to bad : good neighborhoods

• Themes of Twitter users

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A few thoughts on Google+

Velocity

• Google+ is tracking the speed of traffic by time-stamping every click

• This helps determine “QDF” factors (“query deserves freshness”), and rank sites accordingly

- +1-ing other sites adds a level of trust for others in your network

- iCrossing believes that authoritative and aggregated plus-ones and shares will provide increased visibility for the sites being shared

- Plus-one the pages you really like and would use

- Add a +1 button to your content to encourage other Google+ users to spread the word, and send a signal

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+1

Google+

• “Plus one annotated URLs receive 20% higher CTR in the SERPs.”

- Google

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Social relevancy in Google+ now critical towards search relevancy in Google Web search

In other words, social signals offer Google a proprietary social lens in to apply towards the Google search algorithm when necessary

Google+ - The Bottom Line

• Yes, marketers should become active in Google+

• Google+ should be treated as a primary top-tier social network, in line with Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn

• Social presence and network signals in Google+ will have an impact on standard web search

• Engagement and outreach programs will be critical to search

• Content production and promotion will be critical to success in Google+ and Google web search

• Natural search tactics critical to social in terms of extending opportunities in networks

• Search and social practitioners must become fully literate in both search and social to be successful

• Google+ is about search+social, and this will be a core theme for marketers for some time to come

• Continue to watch the Google+ story develop – this is just the beginning, and it will continue to change

THANK YOU

Rob GarnerVP, Strategy

iCrossing.comRob.Garner@icrossing.com

@robgarner214.676.2089

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