Columnist Eric Enge recaps a session from SMX West detailing fresh ideas for how search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing can work together to produce results.
“SEO and Social: A Match Made in Marketing Heaven.” One of the great things about this session is that all four speakers took a step back and provided fresh ideas on how to think about the integration of these two disciplines.
Flexibility and a willingness to fail
Step 1: Lead with data
It’s in social where you can discover things such as:
What are people saying about your product to their friends?
How are they interacting with your competitors?
What customer service issues are they having?
What type of content gets the most engagement?
Step 2: Create a content strategy
Some key points for this are:
Plan for unbridled success. Your plan has to help us succeed, and in a big way, elsewise, why are we playing the game?
Track the right metrics. We must measure our results and tune our content creation strategies over time.
Pick your channels. Focus your efforts on the ones that create the best connections with you customers.
Build a dynamic team based on brand needs.
Step 3: Leverage relevance and context
There are three major types of content:
Hero content: Large-scale content that you create around major events. These are the ones where you are swinging for the fences.
Hub content: Regularly scheduled push content for your prime prospects.
Hygiene content: Always-on “pull” content designed for your core targets.
Make sure to maintain a publication checklist, so that all the right people get involved, and never release a piece of content without proofing it first!
Step 4: Ignite conversations and amplify
There are four parts to this step:
Assign a dedicated team.
Hire the most amazing writers as brand ambassadors.
Have everyone on board with data review.
Be ready to move (fast when opportunities or issues demand it!).
Step 5: Experiment, measure, repeat
Remember the process chart above? All these processes are continuous and interacting. Along the way, look for key opportunities to amplify at a moment’s notice:
High organic reach = amplify
Heavy website traffic = amplify
Key cultural moment = amplify
Last, but not least, remember to fail fast, fail forward. Your path to success is made possible by your willingness to fail, fail often and learn from those failures as rapidly as possible.
Bridging the data gap with social Media
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