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I-Search Discussion List
"Social Search Marketing and Technology"
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Moderator: Published by:
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February 07, 2013 I-Search #156
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// -- CONTINUING DISCUSSION -- //
"Social Search Optimization"
~ Mary Mac
~ WebmasterRadio
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==> Social Search Optimization
From: I-Search <>
Discussion: What particular skills and or tech from traditional
SEO do you find most useful for your social (search) marketing?
Author tags get applied. Fun tips are appreciated!
Mary Mac
Yes to hashtags! Also, target your comments on social media the
same way you target content on a landing page.
Do not try to appeal to the world. Instead, post information that
pertains to the search interests of known buying personas for
your product or service. And use keywords that are used in
typical searches by your targeted buyers.
That is the technique I use to build a global community, without
even promoting a company. If you are promoting a company, you can
get much better results.
To see how I do it, see https://twitter.com/bestwebstrategy
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==> Social Search Optimization
From: I-Search <>
Discussion: What particular skills and or tech from traditional
SEO do you find most useful for your social (search) marketing?
Author tags get applied. Fun tips are appreciated!
Thanks to Ross Dunn and John Carcutt, additional discussion
appears in this week's Webmaster Radio 101 episode, 17 mins in.
Tune in to the show for more. Partial transcript:
Ross: The first thing I think of is how is this going to affect
my overall link profile, social credibility profile, all that
kind of thing. I'm always thinking about how things connect and
wether or not is on the same topic and theme. I always try to
think in terms of continuity. That's my first thought. Mostly
it's superstition. Because none of it has been proven. I always
think about continuity that what I always talk about will somehow
benefit when all the signals start to make a difference.
John: When you think about targeting and building authority on a
certain topic on your website which is what you want to do from
an SEO standpoint, when you want to build authority on a certain
topic you want to take that same topical relevancy and have it
translate to your social presence as well. So when those social
signals really start impacting from a search perspective, there's
continuity between your targeting on your site and your targeting
on your social.
Ross: I generally think that way.
John: That's a great thought. I was thinking about what are some
of the skills that you need have as an SEO. You need to be able
to do keyword research, you need to know some basic coding
skills, you need to be able to dig into analyzing analytics. I
think the analytics side of it from a, is really the main point
of it is really where I make the connection is between the skill
set from an SEO and a skill set from social media marketing, you
have to understand the impact of what you're doing. You have to
be able to measure. You have to be able to know that 'if I do
this, this is the impact in SEO' you have to have that same skill
in social media. If I'm making this kinda move in social being
able to look at those analytics, look at those metrics, and
seeing what kind of impact it's having. I think that's a good
skill that carries across both of those mediums.
Ross: Even the fact that you know that whatever you do online has
impact. In this case it's social media that's amplified.
John: It's really interesting. I've had conversations with
people, you remember years ago when we started people said you
can't measure it, SEO is like this black box, you can do all this
work and you're not really sure if you're having any impact on
any of it. Well that's changed a lot in the past four of five
years there's a lot better ways and more specific ways to measure
the impact of SEO on a website and on a business. Well social
media right now is in that old-school SEO, where how do you
really measure impact of social media, it's not really measurable
as far as driving business and ROI, and they're having those same
kinda conversations around social media that we used to have
around SEO. If some of the learnings we've learned in SEO to make
it more measurable and impactful, we're going to be able to apply
to social media over time. We're not there yet but we're getting
there.
Ross: A lot of things about proving wether or not what you're
doing is having any impact. When it comes right down to it, there
are ways. And analytics has been the root for it. In social media
or even link building it's far more difficult. Social media will
ultimately at some point but link building has been around for a
while and they really don't have any good examples of that
either.
John: It is interesting that just this last week Facebook
announced the ability able to tag your webpages with a Facebook
tag that will pull back information into the Facebook analytics
that comes directly from your site, so you'll be able to track
your conversions on your website from your Facebook advertising
traffic. So they're working on it. It's coming out. It's
happening. It will just take some time.
Ross: And that's just one social media site. I got an email from
a reseller that a competitor is doing some web marketing for the
client, and we're doing some. You gotta love it when there's two.
We're doing it from a point of largess posting, and high quality
stuff; really really well-written. You can tell I'm proud of it;
good writer. The thing is, they're saying that they're the reason
for all the results. They've got a bigger budget, so they put
everything out in the most beautiful reports and they're spending
a lot of time to make this client believe them versus us. The
fact of the matter is, they're getting an increase in traffic and
it's non-branded terms etc. There is no way to prove which
content it is. Unless it's direct traffic, all they know is non-
branded terms have increased. It's all about how you spin it.
That's why I find this field lately a little bit soul grinding.
I don't like to spin things. Its difficult with link building
because, like social as well, is it truly you and I have to be
honest and say I don't know. All I know is that what I'm doing is
good quality and people like it.
John: That's part of the problem. Especially with social when
things get shared so frequently. All of a sudden content you may
have created for a client gets shared by a friend of a friend,
who then has another friend and you actually get a conversion
through. There's no way to track that right now. The cross
channel tracking if somebody emails a link of a Facebook post
that you did, who knows at this point from social because it is
so much of a shared medium tracking it from person to person is
so difficult if not impossible at this point. You're right. It's
the same discussions it's the same arguments we've had SEO is
very hard to track. The technology will show up eventually but
it's just not there yet.
Ross: Do you find that it's not quite as fun as it used to be?
Like in SEO I could really prove it. Back in the day, rankings
improved, I was the only one doing it. These days there are so
many different channels, the person's doing all those channels at
once; it's very difficult to prove it. Even with all our
technology, even with analytics etc. because what we're talking
about is an algorithm, that we're trying to influence based on
good content based on truly relevant information, technically
it's still influencing it.
John: It kinda goes back to the old school, there's an old
advertising saying I know that 50% of my advertising works, I
just don't know which 50%. It's kinda the same with social. Right
now we know we have to do this, we know it has an impact even
when we don't know which individual pieces are having that
impact. I love it, actually. I love trying to figure this stuff
out.
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