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.

Need Proof of Social Media ROI? Look to Real Estate

In what may be the real estate coup of the decade, two Century 21 Realtors landed a Facebook referral for a sale worth $1.1million by engaging a lead with content and reviews that convinced him to send his business their way. In a twist that has the Realtors’ competition kicking itself, the lead was lured from a competitor’s Facebook page after the Realtor there failed to answer a query on the page.

While this is an extreme example, Realtors are increasingly getting on the social media band wagon and reaping its rewards. According to Fast Company, 84% of real estate agents are using social media, and real estate companies are spending more and more marketing dollars on developing apps, websites and social media sites that engage the house buyer or seller and easily connect him or her to a local agent. The described scenario above makes the case for not only posting your own content, but ensuring that you’re paying attention to what your competitors are doing and that you’re listening to customers and potential customers.

A Realtor friend of mine is looking to change up her marketing strategy by focusing most of her marketing budget on social media and digital. It makes sense, given that most people in the market begin their home search online. She’s already seen great results from an email marketing campaign in which she targets her fellow Realtors when she has an exceptional house come up for sale, but she’s also relied on an expensive radio campaign to create awareness among consumers. As a result, she enjoys name recognition, but she has been able to track very few referrals back to the campaign.

As a grad student in Northwestern's Integrated Marketing Communications program and as her marketing advisor, here is my advice to my friend:

• Focus on SEO to ensure that you’re found when consumers begin their search for houses or a Realtor.
• Move from a push marketing strategy to a pull strategy by offering informative, educational content to consumers through a blog, Twitter feed and Facebook. In this way, she can position herself as a thought leader on real estate in her market.
• Focus on trigger communities, like Trulia Voices, where your customers are already spending time. Provide advice to these customers to build credibility, awareness and trust. Give to get!

Written by Kaylene Riemen, MS IMC 2011, Northwestern University, @kayleneriemen