Upgrade your search marketing: integration of social media and search

by Evana (Yi-Fan) Wu

Online marketers, it is time to upgrade your search marketing with an integration of social media. Increasing companies benefit by making their websites highly visible on search engine and social media friendly. The motivation is simple. As consumers are frequently switching between social media and search engine, brands that leverage the search engine and social media optimization will get the most. To win ahead of the social web trend, it really requires marketers to use both right brain and left brain well. 

Top search engines already changed their algorithm to catch this integration trend with social media. They know that when people search, they trust more with information comes from their social network. When you now search on Google, you can easily find sound bites from Facebook, twitter, or Google+, on paid search or organic search. Bing even creates the right-hand social column that includes results from social media or online influencers. The recent introduction of Google Knowledge Graph is another example worth watching.

We can think of integrating social media and search marketing in two related questions. First, how to increase social shares in your web strategy? Content optimization of your website that enables sharing and interaction is essential. Second question, how to optimize your social media campaign in the search results? Cross-channel syndication of keywords and strategic evaluation of social keywords can help. Understanding your social customers by doing Social CRM is another big step to take.

 

Here are three useful tips you can act on to upgrade your search marketing and social media strategies.

1.      Create socially enabled content

Consider the keyword relevance in your social campaign to optimize search. Read more here to understand how to create the optimized content that can easily travel between search and social. You will find that sharable and engagement is always vital to create socially enabled content.

2.      Think of syndication

Start to think of your syndication strategy in the social web. Sync keywords you use in your website and social media to optimize the search and social results. In addition, social sign-in is a good way for this track to get more information and social signals from your customers.

3.      Advance your measure and analytics

Successful and sustainable online strategies always depend on good measurement and analytics. Now you just need to think more social in search and more searching in social. 5 Social Media SEO & Analytics Tools Worth Checking Out is a good article that introduce some good tools.

Sounds easy and fun? Move forward to the integration of social and search to drive profitable traffic and links!

Evana (Yi-Fan) is a graduate student at Northwestern's Medill School, studying Integrated Marketing Communication. Specialized in digital marketing and data analytics, she is highly interested in working with the tech industries. Follow her @evanawu and connect with her on LinkedIn: Evana Wu.