The Convergence of Social Media and Search session was presented by a top group of panelists, including Rebecca Murtagh of Karner Blue Marketing, Jay Berkowitz of Ten Golden Rules and David Wallace of SearchRank.

Jay Berkowitz

Jay started things off by looking at all of the ways that search is impacting social and the ways that social can impact your search. He shared the results of SEMPO’s State of Search survey showing the growth of use of social by search practitioners. Jay said that Facebook is killing Google. Facebook advertising is powerful and highly targeted to the individual by demographics and “likeographics”. The ad images influence about 70% of clicks on Facebook ads. Be sure to test different images and bright colors in images. He shared some case study data that showed Facebook with a much lower CPA than the same campaign run with the same landing page in Google AdWords.

Jay also shared how there are now multiple platforms we just go to directly. If you want a book, no need to search Google — you just go directly to Amazon.com. People are crowdsourcing their search by asking friends for suggestions and comments. LinkedIn is a main source for searching for people. For instance, YouTube has the second most searches as a search engine after Google — above Bing and Yahoo. If you rank on YouTube, you’ll also rank those videos in Google.

How can you use social to impact search results? Panda introduced social signals, such as measuring tweets, +1, etc. Connect your business website to your Google+ profile. Use social profiles to manage your online reputation management and own the first page of results on your brand.

Joe Latatro gave Jay a good suggestion too — search for the “top social media sites” in Google. Skip the first 30 because they may be nofollow. But after that, use those social sites for sharing links.

Rebecca Murtagh

Rebecca was up next and covered the relationship between social media, search and your brand. She started by offering the keys of leveraging social media and search for your brand. The key is to be where your customers, but how do you find them? Inevitably, search is where everyone is and what they still use. Where do they spend their time? The growth of time spent on social networks is growing, even more than online gaming and email.

Consumers respond to search engine above all else.

  • 93% of consumers use search
  • 57% of consumers begin a product search with search
Visibility of your brand in search is more important than ever. You can use social profiles to claim the top spots in search for your brand. Some social profiles that rank well include:
  • Google+ Page
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
  • Manta
  • Spoke, and SO many more!
How does social media impact organic search visibility?
  • Followers/likes/Checkins/Google+
  • Mentions
  • Frequency
  • Topic/relevance
  • Reputation/Authority/Influence
  • Engagement (Klout)
What steps should you take to get started?
  1. Think — develop your strategy.
  2. Brand — create and optimize social profiles.
  3. Focus — don’t bite off more than you can chew. Take a phased approach.
  4. Target — who are your most qualified prospects?
  5. Ignore — focus on quality of audience and interaction that supports your goal (conversion), not just metrics like followers, likes and friends.
  6. Engage — interact in a group and a 1-to-1 conversation. Keep it real. Win hearts and minds.
  7. Plan — synchronize your efforts to amplify your voice.
Customers are seeking:
  • information
  • products
  • services and solutions
  • reviews
  • deals
  • a voice
There are three types of content: owned, earned and paid.
David Wallace
David gave a presentation on using infographics — very interesting! I love infographics! The growth of social integration with search makes content marketing ever more important. One opportunity is infographics.
David said that infographics have been used for many years and shared some examples from as far back as World War II. They are a great way to get information conveyed quickly.
Every infographic starts with an idea. He shared an example from a friend for the “Evolution of the Electric Guitar” which was put out after Les Paul passed away.
eguitar infographic2 Pubcon Vegas: The Convergence of Social Media and Search
Next you need to do research. Look for historical facts, current data/trends, and more.
For the design, decide:
  • horizontal or vertical?
  • smaller version or crop areas out?
  • make sure the graphic loads quickly.
Put the infographic on the domain you want to promote. WordPress is a great platform to use for sharing infographics and you can add the voting and social sharing buttons easily. Also add embed code — this allows others to use the image, but you control the anchor text and link. Great for organic link bait.
Best days to promote are Tuesdays and Wednesdays. StumbleUpon seems to do well for promotion. Share on Facebook and Twitter. Send an optimized press release. A few places to post:
  • visua.ly
  • infographicsarchive
  • submit infographics
  • OMGInfographics
Measure 3-4 weeks after publishing. See how the content did on your social networks.
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