Post on 10-May-2015
description
Real-time Marketing: Connections and Flows
November 9, 2011
iCrossing - Agency services
with clients including…
The web has evolved into a real-time, networked, and synaptic environment
One that is acting more like a digital organism , rather than a
simple set of nodes
Yet many most marketers are still resigned to a passive , rather than
active and agile approach to marketing
While they may be connected, they are not fully alive and present
The current state of this evolution is not so much about “social networks”…
…as it is about hitting a tipping point with
a society that is networked
…exclusion from the network is tantamount to
digital non-existence
Published content is disseminated instantaneously
The fundamental principles of search and network marketing apply
…through active and passive publishing,
there is a profoundly meaningful opportunity to connect
What this means to marketers
• Marketers must act as publishers
• Markets are conversations (thank you Cluetrain)
• “Publishing” is redefined to fit different digital aspects, including conversation
• You have an obligation to dig into data and learn about your target audience
• You have to act in real-time, because it is the nature of the medium
12Copyright iCrossing - Proprietary and Confidential
Real-time marketing
• Thinking like a real-time marketer means being present
• It takes a lot of preparation
• It takes a lot of attention
• Conversations are best addressed while they are happening
• If you don’t have the time, find someone (or a group) in your company who can make time
• Hire somebody (or a group) you can trust to speak on behalf of your company
Just one example of a space where real-time conversations are happening
Community Management
Community Management is real-time, active participa tion within social spaces that goes beyond just sharing content:
• Ongoing listening• Using keyword search, following and monitoring streams, push alerts, etc.
• Establishing search-sensitive social nomenclature and set of behaviors • Converse naturally, but also be aware of major keyword triggers that can help extend your message when
it makes sense
• Pro-actively sharing content based on listening and SEO value• Share and help solve a problem – you benefit in search, and in social
• Making friends, supporting and giving visibility to your Fans and Followers• Show appreciation, and that you are present
• Amplifying content• Use your relevant social networks as a key platform for content distribution (only when it is relevant to the
conversation)
• Building and maintaining relationships with key influencers• This group is like a mouthpiece for your content, and can send distribution into networks of networks
14Copyright iCrossing - Proprietary and Confidential
Paid media placements in social spaces that are often “derivatives” of typical online media placements
Sharing of relevant digital content through various website channels, including distributing to content communities
Starting an ongoing dialogue with consumers by reaching out in their communities and sharing content that is useful, relevant, and portable
Integrating social elements into your website, creating a web experience that meets consumer expectations for sharing content and interacting with other users
Initiatives that seek to build customer dialogueand engagement over time through active community participation and management
Supporting short-term campaigns or promotionsand driving traffic, in conjunction with traditional offline and online media buys
Social media engagement strategy categorization
Content Distribution
Active Outreach
On-site Integration
Community Building
Social Advertising
Description
Increasing exposure for brand or product through continuous distribution of content or “assets” to communities
Building short-term or long-term relationshipswith key influencers online through direct conversations
Establishing your long-term web presence and allowing visitors to share experience with others (this is increasingly a best practice for website development roadmaps)
Creating long-term active relationships with loyal customer base; establishing a “social CRM” or online “focus group” with an embedded value exchange for users
Best Suited For
How do you decide which social space is best for your business?
• Who is your audience?
• Where does your audience congregate and converse?
• Are they on major networks like Twitter or Facebook, or smaller communities better known to your industry?
• How does your audience like to consume content? Images? Video? Blog posts?
Source: Flickr, CC Lic., by SocialGrow
Forums: Thinking outside the major networks
• Identifying forums• Use Google discussion search• Use search to find major networks
CONTENT PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION
18Copyright iCrossing - Proprietary and Confidential
gadgets
blogs
display
sms
mobile
womugc
sem
social
feeds
events
desktopkiosk
video
website
instore
widgets
mms
seo
informationassets
contentdata
functionality
Traffic stream types occurring from a social approach
Search traffic streams
Fundamental product of content creation
and promotion(assuming it is crawlable and
indexable)
ex. Google natural search referrals.
Social network traffic streams
Human propagated through social
networks, status updates, content
promotion or citation across
networks
ex. Traffic from links in Twitter or Facebook status.
Keyword trigger feed
“Push” streams
Non-social feeds,alerts, news feeds, push content via
keyword emphasis via email and RSS
ex. Google Alerts, or content matched
on-page via keyword triggered
feed.
Discovery Streams
Channels based on social voting, or
discovery through personalization,
keyword triggers in preferred networks, recommendations,
etc.
Ex. StumbleUpon, Amazon.com
“people who bought”
PopularityStreams
Channels based on popularity of shared or visited
content in through personalization,
recommendations, etc.
Ex. “Most read,” “most emailed,”,
“most recommended”
Becoming a content producer
• Perform in-depth keyword and market research
• Identify types of content to be targeted (videos, images, news, text, etc.)
• Plan to develop containers for the asset types that will be promoted (HTML, feeds, Web site architecture, etc.)
• Develop a detailed content strategy
• Develop a strategic plan for social content dissemination and engagement
• Identify primary and secondary metrics
• Customize dashboards and analytics platforms to accommodate new metrics
• Determine the specific resources needed for content development, deployment and social interaction, based on the scale determined in the strategy
Identifying content asset types to be targeted
• - How-to’s- FAQ’s- Long and short informational articles- Interviews- Documenting events using multiple digital assets- Infographics- Video- Apps- Databases- Answers- Directories, curated link lists- Conversations (commenting, forums, etc.)- White papers- Powerpoint- Reviews- Live and recorded webinars
Keyword demand, conversation demand
• 1) Knowing what your audience is looking for
• 2) Knowing where they seek it out
• 3) Knowing how they communicate
• 4) Knowing which types of digital assets are critical
• 5) Communicating back properly, with the right answer, in the right way, with utmost sincerity, and with a strategic approach in mind
23Copyright iCrossing - Proprietary and Confidential
Finding conversation demand
• "what should I“
• "where do I"
• "how many"
• “I am considering"
• "looking for“
• …or any other phrase that ends in question mark.
24Copyright iCrossing - Proprietary and Confidential
Social’s Impact on Search and SEO
Shift in Linking Measurement: Social impact on SEO
• Links are the cornerstones of natural search algorithms
• But influence of links has shifted greatly from webmasters and technical influencers, to the average Internet user
• As a result, the social graph has taken a massive bite out of the link graph
• Examples of this include:• Tweeting (not a direct link)• Publishing via blog CMS such as
WordPress or Blogger• Rating, commenting, posting• Bookmarking• Etc.
26Copyright iCrossing - Proprietary and Confidential
Link network size expanded through social
Before outreach After outreach
• NetworkSense Map: # nodes indicates instances of a keyword or URL; the larger the node the more inbound links it has• The larger the network, the more mentions, inbound links and traffic point to each node
Meet the Share Graph A new kind of social link graph
• Search engine’s view of sharing activities across the social graph
• Takes into consideration
• Authority of the network sharer• Theme of the user, or related concepts of the network sharer• Depth of the network sharer’s network, and the authority of those in the
network• Trustworthiness of the network sharer (in relation to the likelihood that they
produce spam or low-quality content• Velocity of keyword usage across a network, and the spreading of that
keyword or phrase over time though shared networks• Velocity of link being shared, over time, based on time frequency, volume,
and level that it cascades though various networks
• Kind of like a cross between the link graph and the social graph
28Copyright iCrossing - Proprietary and Confidential
Social relevancy:It’s just common -sense SEO
29
Social Relevancy: How engines are looking at Twitter
Consider the parallel aspects of websites, and Twitter accounts
• Domain authority : username authority
• Duplicate content : retweets
• Blogging freshness : content freshness : microblogging freshness
• Links : number of followers
• Quality of links : Quality of followers
• Inbound links vs. outbound links : ratio of followers in contrast to the number of people followed
• Linking to bad : good neighborhoods
• Themes of Twitter users
30
A few thoughts on Google+
Velocity
• Google+ is tracking the speed of traffic by time-stamping every click
• This helps determine “QDF” factors (“query deserves freshness”), and rank sites accordingly
- +1-ing other sites adds a level of trust for others in your network
- iCrossing believes that authoritative and aggregated plus-ones and shares will provide increased visibility for the sites being shared
- Plus-one the pages you really like and would use
- Add a +1 button to your content to encourage other Google+ users to spread the word, and send a signal
33
+1
Google+
• “Plus one annotated URLs receive 20% higher CTR in the SERPs.”
34Copyright iCrossing - Proprietary and Confidential
Social relevancy in Google+ now critical towards search relevancy in Google Web search
In other words, social signals offer Google a proprietary social lens in to apply towards the Google search algorithm when necessary
Google+ - The Bottom Line
• Yes, marketers should become active in Google+
• Google+ should be treated as a primary top-tier social network, in line with Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn
• Social presence and network signals in Google+ will have an impact on standard web search
• Engagement and outreach programs will be critical to search
• Content production and promotion will be critical to success in Google+ and Google web search
• Natural search tactics critical to social in terms of extending opportunities in networks
• Search and social practitioners must become fully literate in both search and social to be successful
• Google+ is about search+social, and this will be a core theme for marketers for some time to come
• Continue to watch the Google+ story develop – this is just the beginning, and it will continue to change
THANK YOU
Rob GarnerVP, Strategy
iCrossing.comRob.Garner@icrossing.com
@robgarner214.676.2089
37