Mar 24, 2012

Advanced Social Media Tactics

A hands-on campaign idea

Me

Jonathan Björkskog Partner and head of search at Genero.

Genero A digital agency helping clients to become the leader in their

area by using mostly digital medias. A Nordic agency working on

the Finnish and Swedish markets this far. 21 doers, based in

Helsinki.

Mar 24, 2012

Combine Social Media and SEO

First some basics

Social media is not replacing SEO Both are good in their own way.

Always work with the website as the base Everything made in social media should be made on the base.

First some basics

Build social media campaigns that will benefit you for a long

time Not just the typical two week campaign that then is forgotten.

Social shares are NOT replacing real links Even if people might be telling you so. Both are good in their own way though.

Mar 24, 2012

What if we could

Use Social Media for getting REAL

links?

The Idea for a combined campaign

Could we use fans for content creation and link building? In my opinion, absolutely.

But some things are needed… • Control over the SEO part.

• Control over the tech part.

• Control over the social media part.

• Control over the content creation part.

• A LOT of trust from the client.

The campaign idea

1. Grow a big audience. On Facebook. That’s where the people are now. Do you already have fans?

Congratulations, you can skip this step!

2. Let the audience create content and links for winning prices. The idea is that the content with most likes wins things now and then.

3. Get access to unlimited stories for keeping fans engaged. You might be able to run this for a long time.

Visually

Facebook

(Your

audience)

Your

site

Forums

Blogs

Niche websites

1. Audience

creates

content

2. Audience

shares their

content

3. You get

REAL links AND

social shares

Social medias

Step 1 – Grow the audience

This is the easy part…

- Create competitions for fans, with big enough, relevant prizes.

- Buy Facebook ads and target the relevant groups of people.

Invest in getting some fans, you will need them later, and even if it does not pay off

now, it will soon. Do what works for you, competitions and giveaways works in the

most niches.

Step 2 – “Use” the fans

This is the fun part…

Make a new competition, where fans should create content in

your Facebook app-tab for winning prizes.

Users creates “stories” on your facebook page app, stories that automatically

ends up as content on your website. The “story” with most likes (or votes) every

month wins prizes.

Step 3 – See the content and links

rolling in

Now, THIS is the really fun part…

Engaged fans will do everything for winning.

They will blog about their content, they will post links to their content in forums, they

will get every friend to like and share their content. Not everyone will do that. But a

lot will.

Think about how much more time your armada of followers have for spreading the

word than you!

Mar 24, 2012

Oh, sounds good,

let´s take a look at a

case study

Case: Dog and cat food in Finland

I guess most of you are not working in Finland anyway…

Step 1, building audience

The audience were built through competitions, giveaways and a

charity Christmas campaign. Achieved ~30 - 40 000 fans.

It says: “Like us and get a free piece

of dog-food”, for you that are not

fluent in Finnish..

Bonus. Collect email-addresses for newsletter after liking the page as well

Step 2, Activating the audience

Through an app where the fans should tell a story about how

their own dog liked this kind of food. The story with most likes

every month got a 200€ gift card.

The audience was activated through wall posts, Facebook ads

and Google display ads.

Step 2, Activating the audience

What the fans needed to do to participate:

• Choose the breed of the dog.

• Upload a photo of their dog, write a title and the story.

• Accept that their content appears in the company’s marketing, and submit.

Dog name

Breed

Story

Picture

Accept

Submit

Collect what you

need, but not more.

More fields higher bounce rate, less fields less data.

Keep a good balance

that suits your

target group.

The first month… The winning story

got 691 likes on

Facebook.

Text length in

stories was often

~300 words.

Another month… The winning story

got 251 likes on

Facebook.

Text length in

stories was often

~300 words.

Another month… The winning story

got 357 likes on

Facebook.

Text length in

stories was often

~300 words.

Stories, stories, stories

Mar 24, 2012

Sales increased, this was already a

good SOCIAL MEDIA campaign.

But that’s not the end. We are still on SEARCH marketing expo..

The SEO effects

Remember the categorization per

breed? All breeds get their own page (url) with mostly

user and auto generated content.

When anyone searching for how to feed

almost any breed, these pages are appearing

in first page in Google

Example

The SEO effects

Remember when talking about people sharing their stories?

(Domains

linking to the

site)

The links flow

Category page

A story Forums

Blogs

Niche websites

Social medias A story

A story

Category page

Frontpage, brand

How to continue? There is not really an end.

Grow the “breed” pages. One month, have a photo competition. Another month, have

people telling what their dog likes to play with. And so on…

The most common breeds will naturally get the most content and will become the

strongest.

The breed pages contains EXACTLY what a searcher is looking for, REAL testimonials.

Finally, the breed pages will probably rank for almost anything that includes that

breed.

Other bonuses? Yep!

1. We now use user generated stories as printed product text on

packaging.

2. We have a lot of stories to post on Facebook, to keep fans

engaged.

3. Stories now comes almost naturally with less and less advertising

every month.

4. When we have everything we need about a breed, we can easily change

the categorization.

Campaigns like this

The real social part is missing when users have not made the likeable content themselves. Therefore

they get less engagement and less user promotion.

If you want to do this Make up a good way of categorizing the content you get.

You do not want 10 000 uncategorized stories.

Make sure you are able to handle the tech-part yourself, or get a really trusted partner.

Keep the forms on Facebook. People does not spam as much there when they are in it with

their own name.

Have patience. Building an audience takes time, coding takes time, ranking takes time.

Afraid of low quality content? Use a subdomain or a separate domain for being 100%

sure to avoid Panda killing your main site.

Some last words I would like to see someone do this in more competitive niches like

gambling, travelling and for e-commerce.

Consider having a fallback voting system for the day when Facebook knocks your door and

bans your vote-by-liking.

Choose voting system based on target group. (Facebook like buttons are easy to trick for

tech-savvy-people)

Don’t you have fans, or are you in a niche where fans are impossible to get? Try the same

with email-lists or only AdWords.

Thank you! Questions? Ask whatever during the day.

http://jonathanbjorkskog.com

http://twitter.com/jonathanbj

http://www.genero.fi

Want to do this? Apply for working with us.