General Overview

At the corporate level, companies often struggle with rationalizing the value of allocating time and energy towards social media, Twitter in particular. This is primarily a result of the lack of understanding in regards to social metrics and insufficient tracking. However, Sprout Social puts an end to all this by tracking useful metrics, such as engagement and influence, over your social networks. As the alter ego for the @PPCHero and @SEOBoy Twitter handles, I can tell you that this program was helpful in a variety of ways. Here are some pros and cons that I came across:

Pros

• Connecting all of your accounts in one convenient interface.

This is my favorite aspect of this SaaS. Through their guided process, you can connect your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN and Google Analytics accounts together in one place. This is helpful because it eliminates the need to micro-manage your individual interfaces from different places, which can get confusing! With Sprout Social, syncing your accounts becomes as easy as 1, 2, 3.

• Detailed reporting that is meaningful to businesses.

As internet marketers, we are constantly digesting and analyzing numbers in order to look for ways to improve quality scores, rankings, etc. This is much easier said than done when it comes to tracking the performance of social media. Sprout Social provides you with helpful metrics for tracking performance, such as engagement and influence.

Engagement

Your engagement score is an indicator of how well you are communicating with your audience. The higher your engagement, the more valuable your audience will become to your business.

Influence

Your influence is an indicator of your growth and the interest level among your audience. These numbers are commonly low, but increasing them over time will result in greater brand awareness and enthusiasm for your business.

In addition to these, they also provide you with other more common metrics, such as clicks, new followers and demographics. You can even present them to your boss or company with ease by selecting the “Export Data” button, which compiles your data as a PDF or CSV and presents it in a digestible format.

• Ability to easily create and automate your posts.

I can remember back when I created my first Twitter account. I had to painstakingly curate interesting posts and ensure that they were delivered throughout the day, which turned out to be terribly meticulous. However, Sprout Social enables you to send your message instantly, schedule a one-time or recurring post, and even set up RSS feeds for automated delivery.

What’s better is how easy they make it to create your posts. They have a “Send from Sprout” button you can drag to your navigation bar that creates the post for you. By clicking the button, it pulls bits and pieces of a page’s meta data and generates a headline for your post with link included. If you are using custom bit.ly URLS, these are also compatible with Sprout’s interface. All you need is to do is enter your bit.ly username and API key in the “Account Settings”, then you’re all set.

• Detailed message inbox and outbox.

This section is pretty straightforward, allowing you to filter your messages by incoming and sent messages. Within the “sent” tab, you can see all the messages you have sent, as well as the clicks, retweets and total reach. This feature can be particularly helpful if you’re trying to drill down to your tweets and see which posts are performing well and attracting the most attention.

• Easily locate and attract new followers.

Although I haven’t utilized this section to it’s full potential, Sprout’s “Discovery” tab can be an excellent resource for locating and attracting potential followers to interact with. The best part is how the interface does all the dirty work, performing the search for you.

• Compatibility with Google Analytics.

For those of you looking to go even deeper for a better understanding of your social media efforts in relation to your overall site traffic, Sprout Social is compatible with Google Analytics. In fact, you can sync your Analytics account with your social media handles to have that information included in Sprout’s interface.

More On Facebook

It’s no secret that Facebook is like an addiction for some people with endless status updates, comments and likes taking over every extra minute of the day. However, for the internet marketer, it is equally important to manage your time wisely while taking advantage of the traffic possibilities within Facebook. The Sprout Social application could be the answer to that time management quandary as it gives you the ability to setup an entire day’s worth of Facebook posts in one visit. Here’s a brief look at the Facebook tab and features:

Pros

• Ability to track Facebook performance, in respect to other social media venues.

Being that you can schedule things to be posted on your Facebook and Twitter simultaneously gives you the ability to look at data and know if one is outperforming the other or if both are bringing in equal traffic since blogs, etc. are fed out at the exact same times.

• Extremely insightful demographic info, etc.

The reports section has a ridiculously detailed amount of information about likes, comments, age groups, languages…and having all that data gives you the power to alter your activity to raise traffic in places where it’s needed. Take a look at the screen shot above and see for yourself!

To wrap things up, Sprout Social’s SaaS definitely has a lot of good things going for it. It is my hope that you might try it for yourselves and build off of what I’ve learned so far. In fact, I would recommend this program to any company, small or large, who is looking for a way to consolidate social media efforts into one convenient and easy-to-use platform. But you don’t need me to tell you, go try it out for yourself!

*Big thanks to Kayla Stockert, an account executive here at Hanapin, for compiling the “More On Facebook” section!*

“The “give to get” model really seems to bring power to an online store, just as long as that store is more than a thin vending machine.  Direct conversions?  Not always.  But it’s not that easy anymore.  There is still a long term reward, from branding to optimizing your other marketing channels, that helps websites survive this online climate.  It’s old school marketing, really.”

The Swim Coach

Klout jumped into the social media pool in 2007, and was started by Joe Fernandez and Binh Tran in San Francisco. While Joe was recovering from jaw surgery and was sending recovery updates to friends and family via social media outlets, he had somewhat of an epiphany. The possibilities of gaining influence through social media became an “obsession” for Joe, and Klout came into being.

Swimming in a social media pool with big players like Facebook and Twitter, Klout has certainly attempted to differentiate itself. Klout positions itself as “the standard for influence,” and touts the mission to “help every individual understand and leverage their [online/social] influence.” The K team defines influence as “the ability to drive people to action,” and they’re currently just focusing on Facebook and Twitter. “Actions” are considered to be a:

• Reply
• Retweet
• Comment
• Click

To me, Klout seems kind of like a swim coach in the pool of social media, rooting on users (or swimmers) to be the best in the pool and giving them the tools to do so. How does Klout do this? Through the Klout Score.

The Klout Score

To discover your Klout Score, head to the Klout homepage where you’ll need to register via your Facebook or Twitter account. Once you create your profile, your score will be calculated, and you should also be able to see scores of top influencers. For instance, I can see that Bieber is beating Charlie Sheen, with scores of 100 (the highest possible score) and 83, respectively. Here’s a brief overview of how the score is determined:

The Klout Score is the measurement of your overall online influence. The scores range from 1 to      100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses over 35 variables on  Facebook and Twitter to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score.

Klout defines the three categories of score criteria – True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score – as follows:

*True Reach: the size of your engaged audience (inactive and spam accounts are eliminated)

*Amplification Probability: the likelihood that your content will be acted upon (can you create content that causes others to respond? Can your content spread into networks outside your own?)

*Network Influence: the influence level of your engaged audience (if you’re attracting influential people, then you must have great content!)

Specific factors within these three categories are measured to produce the Klout Score, laid out in the graphic below (click to enlarge):

The New Guy

On June 1, 2011, Klout introduced the new +K feature (think Facebook ‘like’ or Google’s +1 button). Klout recognized that not all of one’s influence was being captured in their data analysis that produced the Klout Score, so the +K feature is a way for users to give feedback, thereby improving the Klout Score analysis.

After you’ve created a Klout account, if you click on “Profile” in the top navigation bar, you’ll see a drop-down menu on the left with a link called “Topics.” The topics shown for each user are currently generated by Klout’s algorithms. This is where the +K feature comes in. According to Klout, with +K you can now:

• Give +K on topics for users who have recently influenced you on a particular topic. NOTE: you can only give out 5 +K’s per day and you can only give +K to the same user on a certain topic once every 7 days.
• More topics are now available and are also more accurate; up to 10 topics now surface per user
• You can now hide topics from public display.

Why does this matter? Because, the more +K’s you receive, the more influence you carry on a particular topic and, ultimately, the higher your Klout Score will be.

SEO Benefits

So, we know that Social Media is becoming increasingly important in SEO efforts. To me, utilizing Klout to help measure your online/social influence seems like a good idea. I’m not saying the topics produced are always going to be 100% reflective of you and your “expertise,” nor am I saying that the Klout Score is a 100% accurate representation of your online influence, but I think Klout can still help in Social Media efforts.

Let’s say you run a children’s bedding website. You’ve worked with the client to create engaging content within your Facebook & Twitter accounts: mentioning promotions, giving advice on topics related to children’s bedding like creating bedroom themes at an affordable price, running contests and giveaways, responding to friends’ comments on your Facebook page and retweeting followers’ tweets, etc. Well, you may think that you’ve reached a good-size audience, but wouldn’t you like to have a more defined idea as to how influential you are? (Not to mention, there are Klout Perks for high influencers, like early movie screenings and invitations to exclusive cocktail receptions!) Not only does Klout provide you with a score that helps you gauge your level of influence, but you can also access your score analysis under the “Profile” link in the top navigation bar. This shows a breakdown of your influence within the three main score prongs – True Reach, Amplification Probability & Network Influence – so you know where you need to improve.

For businesses, the potential for increasing brand awareness, building relationships with existing and potential clients, gaining trust and authority on topics, and increasing reach and revenue with Social Media I believe is still somewhat unrealized. Having a Facebook and Twitter account for your business is great, but what if you’re only reaching a fraction of the people you could be reaching? Take it to the next level by enlisting Klout to help you gain more influence within your industry.

Additional Resources:

http://www.seoboy.com/?s=social+media&x=0&y=0

http://www.seoboy.com/dos-and-donts-for-handling-a-social-media-backlash/

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/2011-seo-and-social-media-checklist/26172/

http://www.browsermedia.co.uk/2011/06/08/how-to-seo-your-facebook-page/

Get a Facebook Like or you're doing it wrong.

Integrating a “like” button into your website is integral to SEO success, since Facebook is now entering the search market with its Open Graph Protocol, and some are considering Facebook to be the only competitor to Google in terms of search marketing. So, in order to tap into this potential stream of traffic from Facebook, you need to integrate Open Graph Protocol into your site. In the following paragraphs, there will be a brief description of Open Graph Protocol, as well as a brief mention of potential strategies to employ in order to utilize your Facebook page.

To start, Facebook is moving in the direction of a social search engine. Suffice to say, without me throwing out glaring statistics at you, that Facebook is no fad. It is here to stay, and it is only going to get larger. And it is innovating, especially in the realm of search engines. Many sites now, such as the ones listed in the introduction (I don’t want you to click on Jersey Shore more than you have to), are listed on Facebook and have the ability to be “liked.” And it works the other way as well—websites frequently have “like” buttons attached to them, linking you to their Facebook profile. This is all old news, I know, but its necessary to know the stakes—Facebook is a new market for SEO marketers, and here is how to do it.

In order to optimize your page for Facebook, you have to enable Open Graph Protocol in your coding. The Open Graph Protocol then allows you to define four properties in your meta tags—title, type, image, and canonical URL. In addition, there are also other entries that aren’t required, but highly recommended, such as location, contact info, object types, and content descriptions. For instance, from here is what an entry for the movie “The Rock” would look like, via IMDB, in its meta tags:

As you can see, the movie has identified itself as “movie,” given a title, supplied an image to go with the title, and at the bottom has given the option content description. Additionally, you can add as many og: tagged properties as you want to tailor your Facebook page, which is recommended but may be more time consuming. All you need to start this process is access to your html code, or your clients coding, and voila, you have a Facebook page. In order to add the “Like” button to your website off of Facebook, it once again is simple after the meta tags have been changed like above. According to the Open Graph page, all you have to do is add a Like button with either an iframe, a JavaScript SDK fb:like XFBML tag, like so:

Now, moving on past the technical side, the major advantage of this “Like” button is that it is in some degree replacing the Link, in terms of SEO jargon. The more people that “like” your page on Facebook, the more relevant your Facebook page will be to particular searches in the Facebook platform. Basically, imagine Facebook as another search engine to optimize for, with its own strategies and tactics, since in many senses it is very different from the major search engines. So how do you get “Likes?” It isn’t easy, but with these strategies you can see results.

First, and most obvious, you have to offer something in exchange for a “Like.” For instance, a short time ago Chipotle offered a buy one get one free deal on a burrito for anyone who liked their fan page, linked to their external page. And consequently, many more people began to “Like” Chipotle on Facebook, thereby generating much more traffic to their external page. Find what you can offer via your page, whether it be a giveaway or a discount, more “Likes” means more Facebook interaction, and more interaction with your external site.

In addition to giveaways, keep supplying content. Keep your Facebook site fresh, with new ads, new commercials, and new content. Keep your fans interested in you, and give them something to tell their friends about. That’s one of the best things about Facebook—it is very easy for word-of-mouth advertising to take hold, as all one has to do to share a link with a friend is type in another friends name, or update their status. The effort barrier is much easier to get past. Also, depending on what you or your client does in terms of business, you can offer sneak peeks of upcoming products to fans who “Like” your page. I for one have been caught by this nifty bit of link bait (now “Like Bait”) by several movies and other products. If you have a cool new product about to be introduced and need a Facebook “Like” spark, use curiosity against your potential fans!

And finally, keep interacting with your fans. The better the connection that people feel with the product, the more likely they will keep “Liking” your page.  And the more likely they will tell their friends, leading to more traffic and conversions to both your Facebook page and your external page.

So, if you haven’t both created a Facebook page and incorporated a “Like” button onto your external page, you are missing out on a lot of potential traffic and conversions. To utilize both features is fairly simple, and you can see an immediate increase in traffic.  So don’t skip on optimizing for SEO for Facebook, because Facebook will only get bigger—don’t miss out!

To start, you need to warm up. That is, don’t immediately plunge into trying to sell something—people catch on to that. Just like how you shouldn’t start running (or yogging) before stretching or you’ll come to a screeching halt, you shouldn’t just jump into trying to sell your brand. This is the most difficult part of the strategy to build a Twitter base—patience. And this is also the most vague—create good content! Basically, add to the conversation! If a topic is trending, hashtag it with a witty or original comment or content. Think about ways to be interesting without being commercial. People can tell when you are trying to sell them something, trust us. The car salesman we’ve all encountered from time to time definitely is a turn off, and one fast way to turn a potential follower/customer into a negative detractor.

So, speaking of content, one good way to generate content people want to see is through giveaways. Now, yes, this probably isn’t the best business model to just give things away to get some Twitter followers, but think more long term—if you give away something that you can afford to give away free, and you can gain a long term follower of your company in the process, you can end up making back the money you lose giving away the free product. But, to ensure you get followers, make sure you make one of the conditions to be entered in the giveaway either a retweet or you have to follow your company. This goes without saying. Usually, a retweet may be more successful, as a follower may unfollow you as soon as the giveaway is over.

Next thing to consider is that people enjoy interaction. Nobody enjoys logging on to Twitter and not having mentions—so interact with your fan base! This is definitely a beginning strategy, because when you are starting, it is much easier to interact with your followers, as the number won’t be that large. But once you start picking up a following (in the mid range), start targeting influential followers for mentions. Use Klout (or many other free tools to measure Twitter influence) to find those users who are deemed “influential.” Then, mention them in Tweets. Any interaction is beneficial to your follower count, especially positive interaction. And, if you get one of the “influential” Twitter uses to Retweet you, all the better.

Next, be sure to be a member of #TeamFollowBack. This means that for anyone who follows you, you follow them back. This is good in the initial stages of your Twitter development, as people are more likely to follow you if they know they can get a follow back. This plays a bit on people’s pride (more Twitter followers? Yes please!) but it is a very good way to get an initial spike of Twitter followers. But, be sure you discontinue this practice after you get a good following, as your follower to following ratio, in order to look like a legitimate (and not spammy) Twitter account of a business, needs to be more than 1:1. Otherwise, people may not follow you, because you can’t get people to follow you with a a follow back.

Finally, try to be patient, as simple as this may sound. Keep normal standards of ROI away from your Twitter account. Don’t get me wrong—you need to know if your time and money is going towards a worthy cause. And you need to establish some sort of breaking point for your business, tailored to your individual company’s needs and goals. But, you need to give it time. Don’t let your standard calculations of ROI keep you from establishing a formidable Twitter following. Because the returns on investment may be slow at first, but given enough time and effort (and with these starting tips utilized) the business you can generate from a successful Twitter account can be massive.

So, to conclude, the beginning stages of your Twitter account can be the most difficult, and trying to your patience. But you must be patient—create good content first. Then, think about giveaways as well as interaction with your followers in general. Especially with your influential followers. And then, let people know initially you are a member of #TeamFollowBack, which should help your follower numbers as well. And through all of this, be patient, because if you aren’t, you will find yourself Tweeting to nobody, without making a sound.

So obviously I had to check it out, and yes, a huge amount of the Facebook wall consists of people complaining about their recent Applebee’s experience.  The Applebee’s Twitter account is the same basic story.  A lot of their commentary consists of some sort of apology or urging dissatisfied customers to call a special hotline number they have set up for “guest relations.”

A large amount of the complaints and negative comments are geared toward the recent accusation from a family whose toddler was served a margarita in his children’s cup rather than the apple juice they ordered at an Applebee’s in Michigan.  All of this controversy currently surrounding the restaurant chain got me thinking about damage control for businesses online, and how we can look at what Applebee’s is doing (or not doing) well, and how these things can be improved upon.

The first thing I’d like to point out is that Applebee’s isn’t sitting back and ignoring the bad press.  This incident was likely isolated to this one location, but as soon as something like this gets out to the press and gossipy web, people are going to blow it up.  To let the bad press build up without confronting it would be a huge error.  Since you can’t control what people will say, you should focus on how to make the impact a softer hit when something does go wrong. Below are a few tips for social media concerning bad press, with Applebee’s as my guinea pig.

DO!

• Respond to legitimate concerns from your customers.  You need to let your customers know that you’re listening to them and care about their experiences at your business.  I scrolled back in time on Applebee’s Facebook page and noticed that their comments become more and more rare the further you go back.  If you’re going to dive into social media, you need to do so with a proactive mindset.  The first time your customers hear from you should NEVER be when things start to go wrong.

DO!

• Address the concern as soon as possible and let your customers know what you’re doing to fix the problem – and FIX IT.  Applebee’s has done well at letting people know that they’ve changed the process for how children are served in their restaurants across the country, not just in the Michigan location:

DO!

• Let your personable side shine through.  Some businesses are plain boring to follow online because they simply share what’s going on with the menu/sales or in this case, doing a lot of damage control.  If you start early in social, and don’t only interact with your customers when there’s a problem, you’re more likely to get a positive response from your efforts.  Personally, I am more likely to unfollow a business account on Facebook or Twitter if they’re constantly spamming my newsfeed/timeline with repetitive information.

Prior to the alcohol incident at the Applebee’s in Michigan, they were running a contest that required followers to interact with them online.  Getting people involved is the best way to have them pay attention to your Tweets and Facebook posts.  For an example of someone who does a really great job of interacting with followers online, check out Scott Wise (Twitter handle: @brewhouse) from Scotty’s Brewhouse in Indiana.  He brings in a lot of great social elements for his restaurants but also gives us just enough insight to his life and other fun stuff to keep people interested in what he has to say.  Also, it’s actually him doing the Tweeting

DO!

• Utilize the options available to you to get the word out.  Sometimes your fans do the best promotions for you, and that’s what the re-tweet button is all about!  You can ask our resident Social Media Guy at Hanapin, Dave Rosborough, how time consuming it can be to come up with original content to keep people engaged.

A good way to show appreciation for your followers is appreciate (retweet/promote) their content as well; otherwise, they might as well be following an RSS feed. –Dave Rosborough, Hanapin Marketing

DON’T!

• Overuse sarcasm or negativity with your customers online.  Not everyone understands a joke when it’s in text form, and some people can’t pick up on dry humor at all.  Sure, the commenter shown below is probably running the topic into the ground, and Applebee’s would likely rather forget the incident and move on, but it’s a pretty serious topic, and shouldn’t be taken lightly especially on an account representative of the company as a whole.  Making too many questionable responses can alienate your customers.

DON’T!

• Comment on EVERYTHING.  You need to decide if someone is using your social outlet as an actual means of contacting the company or just to receive the limelight (these folks are also known as “comment trolls”).  As people grow more and more used to interacting on the Internet, they develop a filter.  It’s becoming easier for other customers to sort out the worthless comments from the ones that are legitimate concerns.  Again, with the example below, avoid using sarcasm, as it just doesn’t make you look much better.

DON’T!

• Well maybe this is a “don’t.”  I’m on the fence on this point anyway.  Applebee’s often refers their complainers on Facebook and Twitter to a hotline so they can report their experience.  I think that this can actually alienate your customers as well.  They’ve already seeked you out once, and it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of customers don’t call this number.  On the bright side, I did some dialing in, and it turns out that this toll free number connects you to a real, live person! Point: Applebee’s.  If this can be avoided, it’s best to not have to redirect people to another medium, and find a way to record trends in complaints (and compliments!) from all mediums that you’re using so that you get a full perspective on your business and what your customers are saying.

The bottom line is that social media is a growing and important area of your online presence.  If you start off strong with a plan in place, you’ll be more likely to enjoy these tools more and see a greater range of benefits to using them.

To start, for those of you who don’t know, Quora at it’s simplest is a question and answer social network. Comparisons to Yahoo! Answers and Answerbag are of course warranted, but Quora is much more. To start, it was co-founded by Adam D’Angelo, who was Facebook’s former CTO (yeah, that Facebook), so it has a very competent managing team. Another huge difference (and factor into Quora’s success) is that there is no anonymity as is much the case with the other often maligned answer networks. So, as a result of this transparency, you tend to see much more insightful and helpful answers (without the wild card factor of anonymity). Also, with Quora, there is an intricate ranking system that gives you a result to your question (or keywords/topics searched).  This ranking system is based on upvotes or downvotes, which are given by users much like Digg. The more votes the answer gets, the more prominently it will be displayed. But, unlike Digg, votes carry different weight depending on the user. Voters who have given good answers previously will have much more influence based on their up/downvote than other users, or users who have had issues with the site. So much like Google’s quality score, user history plays a role. And also, Quora does not allow for solicitation for votes, and any user reported doing this will be banned.

To move past the operating procedures of Quora, there is also the dynamic way in which Quora sorts it’s answers and information. When you sign up as a user, you can have Quora as part of your RSS feed, depending on topics of your choosing. Quora users bookmark certain issues (i.e. religion, Iraq War, 2012 elections, etc.) and sort questions/answers into these topics, and can alert you of new questions and answers. Or, you can simply search questions, topics, or people in the easy to user Quora interface. A good analogy would be a scaled-down, more human version of Google, a mini-Google. And the more upvotes a question/answer gets, the more likely it will be relevant to the keyword/topic you search.

And finally, the sheer amount of people who are “reputable” on Quora is amazing. Quora’s community consists of constant contributors from the Silicon Valley (and other tech luminaries) such as Marc Andreessen, Dustin Moskovitz, and Steve Case. Virtually all PPC/SEO bloggers or authorities have a Quora account as well, making this a valuable and reputable source of information pertinent to the industry of internet marketing. All this being said, it is safe to say that the upside of Quora is very large, but how do you use this for SEO?

In an attempt to keep from commercializing Quora, the administrators have blocked corporations from making accounts and have limited it to individuals with email accounts, as well as prohibited advertising of any type on the site. But, there are definite ways around this to garner more traffic, be it directly or indirectly. Directly speaking, Quora has been added to Google Social. So, having a presence on Quora and having a large amount of followers could lead to your posts being more prominent in search results. The more people who feel your web presence, the more that will listen to your answers or questions.  And because of this, slipping a name in one of your posts or promoting a company blog could lead to a traffic spike, or at least more name recognition. In addition, if you make it clear that you are affiliated with either a client or company, if you are in good standing with many users of Quora, you could see some traffic from those mentions as well.

Indirectly speaking, Quora is a good way to get your name out to a reputable pool of contributors. For instance, based on the niche of your industry (or the industry that you are advertising for a client), you can find what is being asked or what is a hot topic. The more you contribute to this topic type, be it through questions or answers, the more you will get your name out there as an authority on the topic. And the more you capitalize by posting on what is trending or being discussed, not only will you be kept up to date on the issues, but you will have valuable insight into the industry you are advertising for.

Quora is a free question and answer service that is worth a look. It may not be as high in traffic as Yahoo! Answers, but for what it lacks in traffic it gains in reputation and sheer upside. And, being integrated into Google Social is a huge step forward in terms of affecting you or your clients SEO. Take into account the strategies above, and you could see an upswing in either traffic, search rank, or both for free. And be sure to check back with SEO Boy as we keep you up to date on Quora and everything else SEO.

If you work online all day, having to take a three hour nap in the middle of the day can be a disturbing phenomenon. You get very used to having information filter to you naturally in the course of your workflow, and having that awareness removed is its own little emotional trauma. When I wake up I feel uncomfortably disconnected, and today was no exception. Feeling crummy but at least conscious, I reached for the phone on my nightstand and thought, please world, Help a girl out. Tell me what’s going on.

My thought process was something like this:

1. I feel terrible. Reaching for my phone was my main effort for this hour. No way am I going to be able to check all sources of news I would like to in order to understand what’s going on in the world.
2. Hey, I know a lot of people who care about the same kinds of news/events as I do.
3. Thank goodness, they’ll pick up the slack for me while I lie in bed with only one eye open. I can read what they think is important enough to share and that’ll keep me in the loop.

Amusingly, what did my friends (who are overwhelmingly search marketing-biased) tell me was going on today? Basically they told me that I’m not the only one who is relying on people I trust to gather information more effectively, and that the search world is accelerating its accommodation of that truth. So on to the news!

First, Google announced today that they’ve made more updates to Social Search, including the integration of the social search results with the other natural search results it returns (rather than grouping social results at the bottom of the page) and allowing you to link social accounts to your Google profile without publicly sharing that information. You have to be logged into your account to see the Social Search results, and we’ve not yet reached the point where Google is assuming you’ll want to see social info from Person X just because you follow Person Y and Person Y follows Person X, but every little step towards further integration is a demonstration of increased importance.

Second, SEOmoz recently posted a useful little analysis of the SERP ranking impact of a single tweet (well, a single tweet that got retweeted) on a single keyword. The concept that tweets can influence organic search rankings outside of Social Search as described above has a much wider potential impact, so this instance is particularly interesting to those of us trying to stay ahead of the curve rather than waiting for search engines to tell us something’s important.

After browsing around and deciding I was satisfied in my awareness of the SEO goingson for the day, I naturally got philosophical and stared to consider why I felt safe in my understanding. I know the behavioral patterns of the people I follow from previous observation, and I know which types of information each of them are likely to notice and share. Nonetheless, the level of faith I’m putting in the people I follow is high, and whether that’s okay or not is a topic for sociologists to debate. The main point of importance to us as marketers is that it happens. I’m not the only one putting that faith in my friends and industry associates. People want to rely on others. It helps reduce our daily mental workload to delegate responsibility to other people and to make assumptions, and so even if we don’t do it consciously we have a tendency to develop subconscious mental categories and associate people and subjects within them. Using mental shortcuts increases the efficiency of our thinking and our brains don’t really care if it sometimes comes at the price of absolute exhaustiveness.  If we are socially connected online to the people we’ve placed in these categories, all the better, because we can access the information we assume they’ll be giving at any time.

There is, of course, a lot of information swirling around about social search and I’m sure that will continue as cross-integration continues. People are concerned about how it will impact traditional marketing. If it’ll make SEO irrelevant. Etc. and so forth. These concerns aren’t invalid, but marketers being worried about it isn’t going to make people stop using social platforms to share and gather information (see above: it makes life easier). The world evolves and so does marketing. You have to learn and keep up to maintain performance, and such is life. Social integration with search has the potential to give inordinate power to some over others- it’s not the great social leveler; but all types of marketing are essentially contests that pit the cleverness, intelligence, and charisma of one entity against that of others.  It’s time to accept that we all want to catch up on the world in our pajamas and make sure we’re accommodating the fundamental social changes that the rise of social media platforms represents.

• Facebook was (probably) the most searched phrase on Google in 2010?
• Facebook.com was the most visited page in 2010, surpassing Google.com as the king of Web traffic?
• More and more small businesses are using Facebook as their second homepage?

While I typically cringe when hearing these blanket, pro-social media statements, there is one thing I have to say about them. They are true.

Facebook accounts for approximately 2.7% of the search volume on the Internet. While this might not be a significant number to those of us in the SEO business, you can bet 2.7% percent is important to those brand and community mangers out there. Thus, when ranking organically in the independent states of Twitter or Facebook, small businesses can expect a have a pleasant boost on their overall marketing goals.

This first part of this blog post will help you navigate the young, convoluted, and ever-changing Facebook search landscape, while the second part of the post will help you to coordinate a social SEO strategy that will complement your overall SEO marketing plan.

Social SEO 101: Facebook Auto-Complete vs. Facebook SERP

There are two primary ways to search in Facebook. The first is through AutoComplete, the prominent search bar displayed in the top, center of your Facebook page.

The second way to search on Facebook is the more traditional search engine results page with pre-determined search filters (pages, people, web results, events, etc.).

Auto-complete Explained

True to the Zuckerburg mentality that Facebook knows what you want more than you know what you want, type a search term into the AutoComplete box, hit enter, and Facebook directs you to the first result in its auto-complete form (and not to a full SERP like in Google). To get to a full search results page, it takes an additional click on the “See more results for…” button.

The auto-complete is the best place a brand or company can rank. The most important item to note, however, is that in Facebook, personalization factors carry more significance than search volume. In other words, the more your brand’s content is shared and the more your organizations Facebook page is liked, the better your chances to rank. VerticalMeasures.com does a nice job of summarizing how the AutoComplete box ranks:

That user’s name

Events that user has been invited to

Questions with the search term in it

A friend of the user with the search term in the name

A friend of a friend of the user with the search term in the name

Groups that the user has joined

Apps used by that user

Pages that user has liked

Pages related to that users interests

Pages that users friends have liked

Facebook SERP Layout

The Facebook SERP offers a number of variables you can limit your search by: People, pages, web results, events, groups, etc.

Facebook defaults to the “All Results” search variable, which intermingles apps, events, people, pages, and all other Facebook goodies together in one results page.

Like AutoComplete, there are a few bits of knowledge that can help your organization and brand rank in the more traditional Facebook search:

People, a.k.a friend or second degree friend with keyword in name

Pages with keyword in page name in tandem with total likes. Can outrank friend with keyword in name… sometimes…

Posts with keyword in posts (status updates, links shared, etc.)

Web results, fueled by Bing (important to note for the blurring of lines between social media and search)

Source: AimClearBlog.com

Imrpoving Ranks in Facebook Search

To optimize your company’s fan page for Facebook searches, content managers should concentrate on integrating target keywords into the following areas:

1. Fan Page Name – Keep the fan page name branded. Resist the urge to get clever by attempting to integrate a keyword in fan page name as this cleverness could hurt your branded social search rankings in the long-term.
2. Vanity URL – Similar to the fan page name, keep your vanity URL branded. Also, claim your company’s vanity page URL as soon as possible. Please note: It takes 25 page likes for Facebook to allow the vanity URL for fan pages.
3. Keyword Driven Info Page and About Box – The info page tab and the about box are probably the most important places on your organization’s Facebook fan page to integrate target keywords. On the info page, be consistent with corporate branding for your organization’s products and services.
4. Keyword Driven Status Updates – Adding target keywords to your status updates won’t only add to page relevancy with your current fans, but will also aid in your ranking results for real time search. Additionally, status updates are searchable in the traditional Facebook SERP as far back as 30 days. Finally, inserting keywords here may also be handy for your Twitter account if you happen to duplicate posts between a Facebook and a Twitter account.
5. FBML Pages – Much like the Facebook info tab, you can add the FBML application to include more keywords on your fan page. Treat these tabs as if you were writing web copy for a company website. For example, keywords can be integrated into custom tabs that promote a contest, share a company’s schedule of events, or even a tab dedicated to a company’s history.
6. Photo and Video Descriptions – Optimize all of your online multimedia content with your target keywords in mind. Following a general multimedia search engine optimization strategy across all of your marketing channels should be a primary SEO goal.
7. Adjust Privacy Setting – If you are an individual, you might want to put your Facebook page on lockdown from the general public. However, if you are a company, I suggest opening your page and content up to everyone.
8. Facebook Likes – Promote giveways and contests, ask questions and conduct polls, and engage with your audience as authentically as you can. Basically, do everything possible to increase the number of likes on your fan page. Consider every like a vote to your page’s authority.

Hopefully, this will stand as a starter guide for how the internal Facebook search algorithm works. In addition, the 8 steps above should guide you through the basic social SEO marketing strategies. For a more comprehensive guide to all things Facebook SEO and Ranking, check out aimClear’s study on Facebook’s internal search. AimClear has provided a great resource for us SEO specialists just beginning to dabble in the social SEO realm. Kudos!

In a nutshell, personalized search is Google’s attempt to customize the search engine experience to the user so as to give the most relevant results back to the searcher. It does this in two ways, differentiated by whether or not the user has signed up for a Google account. The first way, after signing up for a Google account and logging in, is allowing the user to allow Google to keep track of what sites the user visits and also what search queries the user enters. Based on these preferences, Google then tailors results on SERPs based upon the user’s history in relation to their search query. Google allows the user to edit their history via access to their Google account, and also allows them to opt out of having their SERPs personalized (meaning an end to Google’s tracking). The other way that Google personalizes SERPs pertains to people who haven’t signed up for a Google account. In this case, Google takes into account the web history of the last 180 days through using a cookie, and displays customized results to that local computer’s history. So, Google is not exactly giving personal results tailored to the individual user, but to anyone who has used that computer in the past 180 days. Despite this, users and non-users alike can decide to opt out of Google accessing their previous history.

As previously mentioned, Google is “kind of a big deal,” so when they come out with something new, the ripples can be felt all over the digital world. So, as personalization has now come to the forefront of what is deemed “relevant” for a user’s experience, other sites have followed suit, particularly news media sites. This is all well and good, but if you heavily account for a user’s preferences and most visited sites in deciding what to show in SERPs, how do they expand their tastes and find new sites that may still interest them? How do users get diverse search results that may help them better understand what they were looking for in their search query? And important for those of us in the SEO business, how do we reach people using Google if our client/company doesn’t fall within one of the user’s preferential “interests” as defined by Google? It seems as though, on first inspection, that this may hurt SEO efforts and limit serendipitous results in regards to search queries. So how to combat this? One answer, shown through another media outlet that is suffering from personalized search results, is social media.

Online news sites have found that around 75 % of people get news from someone else via e-mail or social media, and over half of them (52 %) forward it on to their contacts. In addition, a survey conducted by NPR found that 74.6 % of their Facebook fans stated that Facebook was a “major way in which they receive news and information.” In addition, this same survey (included on the link above), 72.3 % of those surveyed expect their friends to send them links to interesting news stories. So what does this mean? News media consumption is often based on a user’s preferences, and in some cases certain online news sources have begun collecting user preferences in order to show more “relevant” stories to their users, much like Google personalized search. And in order to get more news out to people outside of their usual readership, many of these news sites have begun expanding into Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms. How better to expand a following and gain more readers than to give your audience a great bit of news through such an easily transmitted channel such as Facebook, and then watch as your news spreads to users who had never even considered your site as a source. The analogy between those of us in SEO trying to up our traffic while dealing with Google personalized search, and the various news media outlets competing with a user’s preferences is fairly clear, and the answer easy to understand and implement—use social media. Get your client/company’s name out there on the social channels by giving something to be spread by your followers. What you decide to use (a blog post, an ad, a new video, really anything that is good “bait” much in the same way as most types of link bait) is up to you and your client/company, but the end result should help you get over any lack of traffic you may perceive as a result of Google personalized search.

So, even though personalized search may affect or change certain SEO tactics, there are still many that will go unaffected, like utilizing social media. And, if you are ever looking for new strategies, social media is always a good avenue to test. As seen in another industry that is often affected by user preferences (be it directly through preference-based reporting or just by any user’s inherent preference), it can be a powerful tool when utilized correctly to help overcome user preferences and add a certain amount of “serendipity” back into the process of search.

Any manager given the task to analyze a budget will be forced to look at where the bulk of its sales came from and look where other sales originated. This means zeroing in on lead sources.

Where did your online traffic come from?

Where did your phone traffic come from?

Where did your social media traffic come from?

Knowing where your customer traffic came from is only a piece of the puzzle. Thousands of people could come to you because of an offer.

What did your online traffic buy?

What did your phone traffic buy?

What did your social media traffic buy?

It gets even more detailed when you look at what type of online traffic (SEO, PPC, Link sites), phone (yellow pages, website, etc) and social media (ads, pages, etc)

The problem is that there are many ways for a customer to contact you that it starts to blur. A person could see a billboard with phone number or URL and type in anything it saw in a search engine. A magazine ad could lead to a phone call but they mention the website as prompt. If the magazine generated the largest sales potential, a manager would be in danger of cutting the magazine ad and diverting the budget to online efforts. If the online efforts were generating smaller sales, this would create a massive amount of frustration because they didn’t look at all the factors on HOW they made the sales. Cost-benefit analysis has to be analyzed. If online ad spending is about to outpace newspaper ads, what is the revenue generated by that switch?

SEO could stand for Search EFFORT Optimization because the search engine as we know it is expanding to include many different attributes feeding and supporting one another. There are many distractions and coming technologies, but remember to keep focused on what your clients and customers want.

1. Be aware of your spending in time and money in regards to your ROI.

2.  Review the terms the people use to describe your business.  Try to stay away from industry-speak.

3. Be aware of how people want your business to interact with them.

4. Keep an eye and ear to your offline and online reputation and that of your competitors.

This year is a time to see how these toys and tools can enhance what you have already – not abandoning them.