the secret power of social media success 7-25-2011

The Hidden Power of Social Media:

Increase Google RankGrow Web TrafficBuild Community and EngagementDrive Leads and Referrals

Keith SauroNational Sales Director Digital Sherpa

We Are Driven to Help Our Clients on the Social Web Based on Our Own Results

Our magazines increased unique website visitors by 23% in two months by regularly sharing content and aggressively building our social networks

Lesson’s learned: 1) It’s powerful 2) It is time consuming 3) It creates results

First, some definitions

Unique Visits – # of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to your website Pageview – A pageview is an instance of a page being loaded by a browser AVG Time on Site – the total time on site for all visits divided by the total number of visits Organic – visits sourced from unpaid search results (i.e. Google) Google Juice – the mysterious quality that causes pages to come up high and/or often in a

Google search. (We use this as a generic term applicable to all search engines, not just Google.)

Other Definitions That Are good to know: Google Analytics – shows you how people found your site & how they explored it Page – a document/file you view in a web browser (i.e. Home, About Us, a blog post, Category,

etc.) Site or Website - a collection of pages with a common URL Referring Site – the page a visitor was previously on before arriving on the current page Keyword – a word or group of words that compromise a search term (i.e. what you type into

Google) Landing Page – the first page a viewer sees when visiting a website Visits – # of individual sessions initiated by all the visitors to your site Direct – visits sourced from typing in URL, bookmarks or some email clients (i.e. Outlook)

The Social Web

Search

Research

Shop

Discover

More than half the time, people click on one of the first things that they see…

More than half the time, people click on one of the first things that they see…

The Social Web

Social Media explosion

“44% of Internet users will visit a social network monthly in 2009” “85% of social media users thought companies should interact with their consumers through social media”  “Nearly 6 out of 10 Americans who use social media interact with companies on social media sites”

“The fastest growing segment of social media users is people between the ages of 35 and 55 years old.”

Pingdom Study Reflects Change in Social Network Demographics

Average Facebook user: 44 Years-old

Social Web Value Has Increased!

NEW THIRD PARTY ENDORSED SEARCH!

From people you trust…YOUR FRIENDS!

Bing and FacebookQuestion? Ask Your Wife, Ask Your Friends, Ask Your

Search Engine

Google +1: Responds by Putting Networks & Connections to Work

There are two paths to Social Media Marketing:

1.) Content Marketing: Content marketing is an umbrella term

encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation or sharing of content for the purpose of engaging current and potential consumer bases.

2.) Social Networking:A social network is a social structure made up of

individuals (or organizations), which are connected by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, etc…

THIS IS WHERE PEOPLE MISS THE BOAT….

How Does Content Marketing Work?

Let’s go look at a blog with a Social Media Interface

5 Content Marketing Facts

1. Creating fresh, frequent, unique web content is a powerful strategy for driving organic and direct web traffic

2. Blogs’ intuitive content management systems make it feasible to populate the web with fresh content…REGULARLY

3. Blogs are search engine friendly-presenting neatly organized content for indexing (tags, links, categories, etc.) and returning relevant content

4. Well executed blogging will share earned SEO benefits with a related web site

5. Web content distributed on social platforms (Twitter and Facebook) exaggerates organic and direct traffic results

Dispelling Web Marketing Myth #1

“ I have to rank very high for a popular query to get lots of traffic”

For example, aiming for #1 on Apartments Cupertino, CA Too much competition from sites with content volume Apartments Cupertino is only a small slice of the Apartment

search pie It is also not the traffic you want- will not result in

meaningful conversion unless you have the world’s best general resource for Apartments Cupertino, CA

Put yourself in the shoes of the searcher…..the search engines will

Popular Queries: Too General and Competitive for Local Communities

A search for “apartments

Cupertino” returns mostly ILS, and

ratings sites

Long Tail Local Strateg

A search for “apartments

cupertino theater” returns

apartment community

content

An integrated marketing plan provides you with the best opportunity to reach all prospective renters

Social media marketing allows you to connect with your renters and prospects directly

Some renters and prospects prefer to use ILS when searching

Some prefer to use Google or Social Networks

You want to be everywhere your renters and prospects are

Why Social Media Marketing?

Grasping Long Tail: “Most Important Web Page”

Source: Doug Cook Search Director Twitter, Yahoo, Able Grape

Specificity of Long Tail

Source: Doug Cook Search Director Twitter, Yahoo, Able Grape

in

Creativity of Long Tail

Source: Doug Cook Search Director Twitter, Yahoo, Able Grape

Large room apartm

ents fitness center m

idtown

Atlanta

Spacious A

partments

midtow

n amenities

Atlanta

Dispelling Web Marketing Myth #2

“More Traffic Is Better”

Let’s take two fictitious examples

NiftyAtlantaApartments.com

• 1000 search visits/day AtlantaApartmentSpam.com

• 10,000 search visits/day

Web Marketing Myth #2:Interactions Spell Success

Let’s say NiftyAtlantaApartments.com is user focused 35% meaningful interactions (conversions)/day

And AtlantaApartmentSpam is traffic focused 2% meaningful interactions (conversions)/day

Then NiftyAtlantaApartments is more successful More users (350 vs. 200) engaged each day More likely to have repeat users and grow search traffic

AtlantaApartmentSpam is: tarnishing their brand creating hazard of losing their search traffic

Evidence That Content Marketing Works to Drive Web Traffic

Apartmentfinder.com traffic increases from 1.3M to 2.0M visits per month during the year following our blog launch and social content marketing campaign

Our social marketing activities drove a 54% total increase in monthly visitors without additional SEM investment

Keyword traffic increases by 40% from 570K to 800K monthly visitors following social campaign launch

258K different searches drive 6.7M visits…..increased content and keyword creation works to drive organic traffic

Social Content Sharing Radically Changes Consumer Web Habits

Dramatic Rise from 2007 to

2009

Continued growth in 2010

Web site

Web site FacebookFacebook

TwitterTwitter

OtherSoc.Id’s

OtherSoc.Id’s

BlogBlog

Found in large search stream…..

•Benefits from long tail searches

•Trusted site/blog

•Consistent topics

•Keywords and language matter

Audience building for “Web Only” brand with nothing to sell but free content

Content Marketed Across Social Platforms

Bainbridge Social Media Footprint

“Now that the blogs have been live for some time, we are seeing stronger organic placement and overall web traffic monthly. The growth is building each month.”

- Jared Miller, VP of Marketing

Since launching in late 2009, every property has experienced an increase in organic, non-paid traffic to their web sites

10 properties have realized an increase in organic traffic of more than 70%, and four of these have seen more than 100%

As a result, Bainbridge has been able to eliminate over $100,000 of annual online marketing spend in paid search advertising

A custom, turnkey Internet marketing tool for small to medium size businesses

For a low monthly fee, Digital Sherpa will develop and execute a complete social media program for a new kind of Internet marketing presence. We eliminate the risk, time expenditure, and complexity of using these tools.

Digital Sherpa is a systemIt saves you time, and gets results

•Success requires a full system / multiple tools•Regular content sharing is essential

How does it work?

There are 5 Great Reasons to Use

Attract online traffic

Find new customers

Content creation

Generate leads

Social media presence

Oh, and One More Important Reason!

Attract online traffic

Find new customers

Content creation

Generate leads

Social media presence

SAVES YOU TIME!

Do It All ProgramFOR A LOW MONTHLY FEE of $395 for 13 months:

•A Custom Designed Blog- Custom Header, Categories, Photo gallery

•Facebook “Like Page”•Twitter Feed•8 ORIGINAL posts a month: Participate as much as you like•Posts auto-populate to FB and Twitter•E-commerce functionality•Blog Comment Monitoring•Email list building and lead capture•Your Own Account Manager•LOTS OF EXPERIENCED PEOPLE THAT KNOW HOW TO CREATE CONTENT THAT GOOGLE LIKES!

THERE ARE NO SET UP FEES OR HIDDEN COSTS

SummaryWhat it is1) Turnkey social media marketing solution 2) Low monthly fee3) Simple, powerful, customizable4) Dedicated account manager coordinates whole program with you5) ksauro@nci.com or 913-908-23936) www.digitalsherpa.com or www.brokersherpa.com Benefits for your company1) Higher search engine visibility2) More web traffic3) More leads 4) Increased word-of-mouth / More referrals5) More salesCopy of this presentation at:http://www.slideshare.net/ksauro/the-secret-power-of-social-media-digital-and-broker-sherpa-1-242011