The Increasing Importance of Social Signals – A Guide to Creating and Harnessing the Power of Social Networks!

In my last post I gave a short overview on social signals and what search engines like Google and Bing look out for, I also briefly commented on the effect these signals can have on your business. After reading more around the subject of social signals it became clear that it is something that every business will have to leverage in order to stay competitive in the world of search engine optimisation in the coming years.  This blog post will aim to guide you through the process of what social signals your business needs to create and what your business can do to harness the power of the social networks.

Jones, (2013) indicates that ‘one of the primary signals that search engines like Google look out for is your engagement on social media such as Google + Local, Facebook and Twitter.  Google now measure the number and quality of the reviews and engagement you receive from your followers to measure your authority for search engine ranking purposes.’ He goes on to say that ‘social signals will become as important if not more important than traditional signals like links and title tags’.

What Do We Need to Create Social Signals?

Jones, (2013) recommends two key areas where your business should have a presence in order to create quality social signals

1.       Create a Google + Local Page

Google + pages are free and have more than 250 million active members. A presence on Google + allows people to review and share your business globally and could prove to be a significant tool for improving your search engine ranking. Below is a comprehensive guide from Jones on how to set up a Google + page.

Helpful Link to Set Up Google + Page -

Click here to read - Page 260 of Jones, (2013), Search Engine Optimization: You’re Visual Blueprint for Effective Internet Marketing.

2.       Sign Up To Leading Social Media Networks

The two most important social networks to have a presence on are Facebook and Twitter, when using these sites it is critically important to create good content because it will help engage your audience which will in turn lead to Retweets and Facebook shares. These Retweets and Facebook shares will then be recognised as social signals by search engines like Google and Bing. This will then translate into a positive impact on your websites search engine ranking.

Helpful Links to Set Up Social Pages -

Click here to read - Andrea Vahl’s Eleven Step Guide on How to set Up a Facebook Page for Business.

Click here to read – The Facebook Guide on Create Compelling Content for Your Followers

Click here to read – Twitter’s Guide to Setting up a Business Twitter Account and More!

Harness The Power of Your Social Networks!

Once you have set up your social network accounts it is important to optimise these platforms to create the maximum impact on search engines searching for social signals. Jones, (2013) cites three strategies to optimise your use of social networks;

1.       Acquire Followers with High Klout Scores

One of the best ways to leverage the power of your social networks is to get people with a high number of followers to follow you. Klout is a free service that measures people’s social media influence. Klout provides a score between 1 and 100 to measure a person’s social authority, the higher the score the higher the person’s authority on that particular social platform. Getting these people to follow your content will provide a strong social signal to search engines.

2.       Check Quality and Quantity of Followers

It is important to check the quantity and quality of people who follow you. Followers who do not have a high social influence and do not regularly look at your content should be removed. This can be done through Twitter search. However this check is appropriate for both Twitter and Facebook.

3.       Hire a Dedicated Social Media Manager

The power of social media and its ability to influence your business cannot be underestimated. Social media can not only help your search engine rankings but it can also provide other benefits like a platform for real time support to customers. Having a dedicated social media manager will help to control and improve your use of social media in your business.

References

Jones, (2013), ‘Search Engine Optimization: You’re Visual Blueprint for Effective Internet Marketing’ [Online] < http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Olw7uNt2QPcC&pg=PA258&dq=using+social+signals+to+improve+your+business&hl=en&sa=X&ei=o6JrU-SoF-Xe7AaYtYHgBg&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=using%20social%20signals%20to%20improve%20your%20business&f=false > [Accessed 08/05/2014]

Blogging, Micro Blogging and Social Signals – The Positive Impact on Your Business

Marketing budgets are notoriously hard to justify due to the return on investment being difficult to measure. Running Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and blogs all come in the firing line when trying to justify a budget; the main problem is they don’t appear to drive a large number of sales. Or do they?

I am currently developing a new digital marketing strategy for Ilex Press Ltd as part of my final year study at the University of Brighton. While developing this strategy I investigated the benefits of blogging and micro blogging and the affects it can have on your business and marketing campaign.

Lee et al, (2006) conducted a study on the fortune 500’s corporate blogging and micro blogging strategies and concluded that it is an ‘effective communication tool over the internet’.

While researching this topic I came a across a book called ‘Understanding Digital Marketing: Strategies for Engaging the Digital Generation’ by D, Ryan & C. Jones, (2012) these authors highlight four distinct benefits of blogging and micro blogging which your business could benefit from, they are;

v  Increased Exposure

The use of a blog and twitter feed can enhance the brands profile. Using these platforms as promotional devices is a good way of driving interest in your brand or advertising campaign; this will in turn drive people towards your website or stores creating sales opportunities.

v  High Reach

The reach of the campaign or brand can be greatly extended by using these platforms. Significant increases in awareness can come from authoritative sources which have thousands of followers. Smaller but not insignificant increases can come from customers retweeting or sharing your blog content.

v  Integrated Marketing Communications

Blogging and micro blogging can also offer a great medium for integrated marketing communications. I.e. The content can work side by side with other communication and promotional material.

v  Consumer Engagement

These channels also give the business the opportunity to engage with its customers, creating a two way conversation between customer and business can help create long term relationships. This also greatly improves customer retention.

Creating a Blog

Harnessing these benefits is an incredibly exciting proposition for any business as it may help drive sales revenue and profitability. You may think that you don’t have the skills within your organisation to set up and manage a blog. However, there are many comprehensive guides on the internet to direct you through the process of creating and writing blogs. Two which I have found helpful are below;

1.       Blogger Getting Started Guide - https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/1623800?hl=en

2.       12 Simple Steps to Business Blogging - https://www.simplybusiness.co.uk/microsites/guide-business-blogging/

Blogging and Micro Blogging - Social Signals Improving your Online Visibility

Blogging and Micro Blogging can eventually positively impact your businesses online presence via search engine ranking. Search engines like Google and Bing are using social signals like retweets and blog shares to assess how highly your business should be ranked on specific keywords.

Click here to read a Q&A session with Google and Bing on what social signals count towards your search engine ranking - http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389

An example of social signals effecting a websites Google rank is moz.com; moz.com had just 166 page views until they published a blog called ‘the beginners guide to SEO’ which was then tweeted by smashing magazine who had 779,000 followers. The repercussions where incredible; their page ‘beginners guide to SEO’ popped up on the first page for the keyword ‘beginners guide’ and their search engine traffic increased in line with this.

This is a perfect example why your company should leverage social sites to increase your online presence. After all higher online visibility can be translated into generating a higher number of sales opportunities which will have a direct impact on sales and revenue.

To read more examples on how social signals impact search engine rankings click here - http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/01/31/how-social-signals-impact-search-engine-rankings/

References

D, Ryan & C. Jones, (2012), ‘Understanding Digital Marketing: Strategies for Engaging the Digital Generation’, Kogan Page Ltd, Great Britain

Lee et al, (2006), ‘Corporate blogging strategies of the fortune 500 companies’, Management Decisions, Journal of Management History, Volume 44, Issue 3

 

 

Want to Stay Ahead of Your Competitors? Try a Promotional Competition as Part of Your Marketing Strategy!

Trying to think of new cost effective marketing campaigns to drive customers to your business? Well ever thought of running a promotional competition.

The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP), (2014) define sales promotion as ‘providing an incentive for the consumer to buy by using a range of added direct or indirect benefits, usually on a temporary basis, to make the product or service more attractive. A non-exhaustive list of sales promotions includes: “two for the price of one” offers, money-off offers, text-to-wins, instant-wins, competitions and prize draws.’

Ken Peattie et al, (1997) conducted two studies on sales promotions and competitions and concluded that competitions are a ‘versatile, creative, cost effective marketing tool.’ This is supported by Marketing Week, (2014) who say ‘businesses running competitions are staying in front of competitors due to the benefits of data collection and consumer engagement.’ Marketing Week go onto say ‘competitions are now part of long term marketing strategy for many companies.’

Marketing Week also indicate that running promotional competitions can provide many benefits for your business including;

v  Low Cost

v  Improved Data Collection

v  Creation of Long Term Customer Relationships

v  Improved Consumer Engagement

v  Create Positive Online Word of Mouth

Competitions that are designed well can be inexpensive, running your competition through a channel like social media or email is free. Competitions usually ask the entrant to trade some personal information in return for entering the competition; consumer information like, email addresses, names, home addresses and phone numbers can all be acquired by using competitions and are a valuable asset for your future marketing activities.

Through gaining this personal information your company can strive to build long term customer relationships. This consumer data enables your business to contact these competition entrants with product offers and brand promotion. This in turn may drive them to purchase more regularly over a longer period of time.

A competition is a great way of engaging your audience; audiences are immediately engaged by the drive to compete and the prospect of winning a prize. If the competition is designed well it can simultaneously engage the customer with the company’s products, services and brand name whilst communicating about the competition.

Some competitions have the ability to create an online ‘buzz’ this is where your competition is being talked about by many people online. This will increase the reach of the campaign exponentially and potentially drive people which have never experienced your brand before to enter the competition; this will give you the chance to obtain their data and market to them.

Resources

For more support click here to read Peattie (1999), ‘The Uses of Sales Promotion Competitions in Social Marketing’ - http://smq.sagepub.com.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/content/5/1/22.full.pdf

For a guide to designing a powerful promotional marketing competition click here - http://sbinformation.about.com/cs/advertising/a/promos.html

References

CAP.org, (2014), ‘Sales Promotion’, [Online] > http://www.cap.org.uk/Advertising-Codes/Non-broadcast-HTML/Section-8-Sales-Promotions.aspx < [Accessed 23/04/2014]

Ken Peattie, Sue Peattie & E. B. Emafo (1997) Promotional competitions as a strategic marketing weapon, Journal of Marketing Management

Marketing Week, (2014), Brand Stay Ahead of the Competition, [Online] > http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/trends/brands-stay-ahead-of-the-competition/4002435.article < [Accessed 02/04/2014]

Five Factors to Consider When Developing a Viral Marketing Campaign

Viral marketing is defined as, ‘using consumer communication as a means of multiplying a brand’s popularity through customers spreading the brand name of a product or name of a company’. (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004)

As part of my study at the University of Brighton I have been tasked with developing a new digital marketing strategy for a company of my choice. While developing this viral marketing campaign I came across a study by Woerdl et al (2008) that cited four strengths of viral marketing and presented five key factors to consider when developing a viral marketing campaign.

Four strengths of viral marketing are;

v  Low Cost

v  High Reach

v  Ability to Integrated Marketing Communications

v  High Diffusion Speed

These strengths make viral marketing an incredibly exciting proposition for any business, if you are thinking about implementing a viral marketing strategy for your business; consider these five points below to ensure maximum (ROI) return on investment.

Key factors to consider are,

1.       Structure of the campaign - Ask yourself the following questions?

Does it encourage viral activity? Does your campaign encourage people to share the message? Encouraging people to share your message is a key success factor in a viral marketing campaign, the higher proportion of people encouraged to share your message will result in improved campaign reach and higher ROI.

2.       Product or service characteristics – Ask yourself the following questions?

Is the product or service suitable for viral marketing? Can it be passed on easily? Your product or service needs to be suitable for viral marketing; if the product falls down here it could spell in the campaigns failure.

3.       Message content – Ask yourself the following question?

Is the message fun, engaging, easy to use? Does your campaign engage the recipient; the viral concept needs to be designed carefully to make sure it engages the maximum amount of people. Creating a competition to win a prize may be a good way of engaging your audience doing this.

4.       Peer to peer information conduit – Ask yourself the following questions?

What channel does it use? Can it be passed on easily? It is paramount that the recipient is able to pass this message on easily and quickly, a long process will result in the campaigns failure. Advice here would be to use email. Email forwarding is one of the most straight forward things to use for you and your recipient, it also takes no development by your or your business and it’s free.

5.       Diffusion characteristics – Ask yourself the following question?

Does the message spread quickly? Can the recipient see what message is trying to be communicated quickly and effectively, if this is possible it is likely to positively affect the campaign.  

Click here to read the full Woerdl study - http://kar.kent.ac.uk/25586/

References

Hennig‐Thurau, T., Gwinner, K. P., Walsh, G., & Gremler, D. D. (2004). Electronic word‐of‐mouth via consumer‐opinion platforms: What motivates consumers to articulate themselves on the Internet?. Journal of interactive marketing, 18(1), 38-52.

Woerdl et al, (2008) Internet-Induced Marketing Techniques: Critical Factors in Viral Marketing Campaigns. Journal of Business Science and Applied Management, 3 (1). pp. 35-45. ISSN 1753-0296.

Beginners Guide to Running an AdWords Campaign – 6 Steps to Follow

Google AdWords can be a fantastic opportunity to boost the online presence of your brand and improve your businesses ability to find and retain customers. This post will highlight 6 steps to follow in order to set up your first AdWords campaign effectively.

1 – Determine Objectives

First you need to establish the overall objective of your campaign, i.e. to improve page views, improve your sites Google rank or improve overall website traffic. Choosing an objective will help focus your campaign.

2 – Targets

Next it is important to choose some targets for your chosen objectives, this will allow you to measure the success of your campaign e.g. increase online revenue by 10%, grow website traffic by 15%, improve the sites click through rate by 20% or improved the time spent on each page by 20%.

3 – Measurement

The third stage is measurement; this step will allow you to measure and keep track of your targets. The measurement stage is critical to calculating your return on investment (ROI); this stage will help you measure your progress in achieving your overall targets. The targets can be measured through Google Analytics or through your own companies’ revenue and sales figures.

4 – Construct Your Campaign

After creating your objectives, targets and measurement, it is now important to log on to Google AdWords to create your campaign. First log on or create an AdWords account. Following this click into the campaign summary tab, then keywords targeted, this allows you to name your campaign. Next, write your advertisements making sure they are, clear, succinct and have a call to action. This will be an important part of driving traffic towards your website. Thirdly add the keywords related to the advertisements and continue.

5 – Link Google AdWords with Google Analytics

Linking accounts will allow you to track your campaign and aid your ability to measure your ROI.

6 – Check Account Regularly

Checking your account regularly will improve your control over the campaign, giving you the ability to make small changes to the advertisements etc. This will enhance your ability to control and position AdWords operation effectively.

Finally good luck with setting your first campaign up!

Push Strategy in Digital Marketing – Improving Your Online Presence

This week I attended a guest lecture run by the search marketing agency Propellernet at the University of Brighton on the role of public relations (PR) in Digital Marketing and how important PR can be in driving a successful website.

Propellernet are a search marketing agency that specialise in improving the visibility of their clients websites, they operate in many business channels such as travel, retail, fashion and finance. To find out more visit their website Propellernet.co.uk.

The main focus of the presentation was on push and pull tactics and how these tactics can help improve your websites visibility. Push tactics are proactively building links one by one, i.e. ‘pushing’ your information out to potential customers. Pull tactics are earning links, so building creative content ‘pulling’ potential customers to the website.

In this blog we will focus on push tactics, propellernet gave some main categories to work on to develop your push tactics and improve your websites authority and visibility. We will run through four main tactics that can improve your websites online presence.

      Link Chasing

It is important to ask other websites (relevant to your client’s or your own website) to link back to the website you are working on. This will give your client’s or your own website better coverage improving the brand name and websites visibility.

Reactive Pitches

Monitoring the daily news will enable you to create reactive pitches; a reactive pitch is the process of reacting to a relevant news story integrating your own company products or ideas. For example a news story is breaking on safety when skiing; your company sells skiing helmets. Creating an article outlining your products and ideas may help drive traffic towards your website. This will also promote your brand name and products in such a way that a customer may want to purchase a product off the company.

Planned Features

Planning features to post on your website to run alongside related events can be an excellent way of improving your websites online presence.  For example featuring an article, blog post or special deal on your website to tie in with events like Christmas, Valentine’s Day, St Patricks Day, Bank Holidays, or Sports Events like the Football World Cup or Olympics can be beneficial and is a great way of attracting attention to your website.

Blogger Product Reviews

Product reviews is a great way of getting an honest third party review on your products, these can be advantageous when consumers are thinking about purchasing one of your products. Good reviews will help spread your brand name and products; this will in turn drive traffic towards the website and increase the brand exposure online.