Social Media Marketing Plan

Search Engine Success or Search Engine Sabotage?

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Marilyn Buckner in blog 2 Comments

Congressional Challenges with Search Engines

Almost all of us use Google searches, but are you aware of some of the potential problems Google searches can now create for your business?

I recently read an article titled “Search Engines Are a Thorn in Congress’ Side.” The article was about some of the challenges search engines are creating in Washington. Search engines have apparently become a major public relations problem for some members of Congress. In spite of Congressional staffers controlling the content on their websites and social media pages, and the use of search engine optimization and advertising techniques, there’s little they can do about search engine auto-complete suggestions that pop up as users begin to type their query.

Unintentional Branding?

Here are a few examples from the article:

Former Congressman Alcee Hastings was impeached by the House in 1988, and also removed from his job as a U.S. district judge in Florida on charges of bribery and perjury. Although he was later cleared (there may be some new charges), some Google results might make it look like he has been impeached again.

Representative Jean Schmidt’s past just won’t fade away, thanks to Google. While my own Google search for her only brought up the term “ethics,” I looked in Google Images and suggestions like, “ethics,” “corrupt” and “Armenian genocide” showed up. Although cleared on the ethics charges, terms like that can steer voters away from the representative’s website and perhaps a vote for them on Election Day.

For nine other members of Congress, the search scuttlebutt is about whether or not they are gay.

We live in a very transparent world wrapped up in an electronic-cellophane package called the Information Age. SEO and a smart social media marketing plan are certainly essential tools, but who is to say how powerful the imprint of split second exposure to negative terms really is on the human brain? And it’s a no-brainer that having users click through on negative terms can be tough on the PR of not only politicians, but businesses as well.

How exactly do these auto–suggestions work?

The auto-suggestions that show up for a particular user are affected by a long list of items, including some major factors shown below. For more in-depth information on how Google’s auto-complete gears are driven, check out this article from Search Engine Land.

Popularity

2. Location: The region in which the user lives. This one can be particularly frustrating if you are looking for something outside your geographic area. Solution? Change your location, and you change the results.

3. Language: Have you ever looked up a foreign term or name and then had all your results show up in that foreign language? Now you know why.

4. Previous Searches: Whatever a user has previously searched for will alter the results of future searches.

Can anything be done about negative search engine auto-suggestions?

The biggest problem about monitoring or attacking the problem is how auto-suggestions work. What comes up even for a group of people in one part of the country may not be what appears for anyone somewhere else. The best key may be to monitor your social media for any advance warning, be honest with yourself, and then be proactive about any potential problems that could surface.

Media pros working with political celebrities like Herman Cain and Barack Obama have utilized Google AdWords to steer traffic created by negative auto-suggestions to information that could help diffuse the problem. Google AdWords can be used to display a preferred message or website first when negative suggestions are selected. Herman Cain famously did this on “Herman Cain Scandal” as well as “Sharon Bialek,” who accused him of sexual harassment. It obviously did not help him get the nomination, but may have helped him stay in the race a little longer.

Google AdWords and their counterparts in other search engines are based on pay-per-click purchases of key words and phrases. The more popular (and often effective) the word or phrase, the more expensive it can be to purchase. You can check Google’s Keyword or Traffic Estimator tools for the actual popularity of any word or phrase here. Keep in mind, however, that professional pay-per-click companies do a lot more than just look at these statistics. Once keywords are selected, a number of ads are written and market tested for effectiveness in driving the most traffic to your intended site.

The best strategy, however, is to avoid situations that would cause these types of problems in the first place. Google AdWords can also be a very effective way to put across other messages, such as to buy from YOU.

The Latest Social Media Marketing Challenge

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Thomas Watkins in blog 5 Comments

In 2012, your social media marketing strategy is going to be more important than ever before. The responsiveness of consumers to traditional advertising continues to dwindle, and consumers continue to rely on their friends for information on the best products and services. In such an environment, social media easily becomes one of the most powerful marketing tools available to businesses.

Change Is Coming: Google+ and Personalized Searches

No matter what you were doing or how well you were doing it, you’ll need to make some changes to your social media strategy in 2012. In 2011, you were probably focusing on Twitter and Facebook. In 2012, you must pay just as much attention to Google+. The fact is that Google+ has the potential to be a real game-changer for both social media marketing and search engine optimization. This is because Google+ affects personalized search results.

Search results have already reached a high degree of individual personalization. Two next door neighbors with Google accounts or who use Chrome will get different results from a Google search because of their past search history. Likewise, two users of Yahoo! mail will get personalized results from their Yahoo! search. There is also evidence of correlation between Facebook ‘likes’ and search results. And until recently, Twitter was open to Google’s search crawlers.

Google+ adds another dimension to Internet searches, however. The search history of your friends on Google+ will now affect your own search results. If you and your friend are both looking for a new HDTV, you’ll each see products the other looked at appear at the top of your search results (assuming you were both logged in to Google+ while searching). The potential SEO power of this Google+ feature has sent Yahoo! running to Facebook to establish a similar partnership, and it looks like Bing may join them. Therefore, 2012 will likely be defined by a trend to encourage your customers to market for you through their social media. By year’s end, it may make a lot of difference in how visible your company is online.

What this Means for Marketing: Reacting to the Change

If your business has not already established a solid presence in social media, you will need to this year. Having a Facebook page is a must because it is currently the most popular website in the world. Using Twitter is essential because it is among the most popular sources of consumer reviews. Getting on Google+ will be essential if you want to show up in the search results of your customer’s friends. Encouraging your customers to chat about you in each of these mediums will be crucial to your future marketing efforts.

Traditional marketing will probably continue to decrease in effectiveness. Speaking personally, I tend to expect the opposite of whatever a commercial says. When I see a TV ad or a billboard, my first thought is, “that’s a product to be suspicious of.” I believe that good products speak for themselves. If it’s not heavily marketed but I still see people buying it, that tells me:

That the company spent more money on building quality products than on advertising
That it is selling because it works and not because customers are being “mind-controlled”

If other people are anything like me, they will wait to buy your product until a few of their friends mention it in social media. Then, they will look online for more information before finally visiting your website or your store. This makes it crucial to boost the positive chatter about your business among your customers.

A Best Practice: Being All that Your Business Can Be

The U.S. Army provides a great example of marketing. Their commercials were among the few I really liked as a teenager. Their constant calls to “be all that you can be” synced well with my personal values and, for a brief moment, I actually considered enlisting. I echo that sentiment to you. Your business can be all that it can be when you focus on building products and offering services that will get people talking positively and excitedly about you.

There is much talk in the business world today about “best practices,” as corporations try to regain some of the trust and customer loyalty they have lost over the last few decades. To me, the best weapon in a company’s arsenal is to change their marketing from an aggressive customer-as-adversary approach (which is honestly how I perceive many advertisements) to a customer-as-champion approach where I can’t wait to tell every friend and acquaintance how good a product is.

Having spent this blog post (and my last two as well, for that matter) encouraging a social approach to marketing, I ask: What are you doing now to make your customers advertise for you?

Mobile Change

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Logan Bradford in blog 1 Comment

I’ve got to be honest with you: the fact that we can now speak to our phones and they’ll not only obey us, but also speak back, is (1) slightly ridiculous and (2) well, a little creepy. At least to me it is. And since I’m blogging, I can opine. Take that, news writing.

It seems the IQ of phones is increasing by the day, now performing tasks we only thought possible in The Jetsons or Star Trek. They have become the very lifeblood of some people, Facebooking, tweeting, emailing, checking weather and stocks (and ski reports if you’re anything like me) and reading news everywhere they go.

The smart phone revolution began as an effort to get the Internet into the hands (literally) of the everyday Joe, so he could access all his favorite content anywhere he wanted. According to a study done last fall, “44 percent of Americans said they got their news through one or more Internet or mobile digital sources.” (Sept. 11, 2010). Even more significantly, the survey reported that “69% of those with some post-graduate experience got news through a digital source.”

In a survey of 300,000 mobile consumers, 88% of whom owned a device running one the five most popular smartphone operating systems, more than 30% said that mobile is the “most important medium” to access breaking news, narrowly followed by:

Desktop web browsers (29%)

Television (21%) and

Newspapers (3%).

Just over half (56%) of respondents said they expect to use their mobile device to access news and information more frequently in the next year, while 42% said they plan to use it roughly the same amount. Additionally, Apple just announced a couple months ago that on August 23 of this year, the 15 billionth app was downloaded. It might just be me, but I think people are using mobile devices these days.

With these trends indicating changes in people’s behavior, we as Internet marketers need to be changing as well. If that’s what our audiences are doing, we had better keep up with them. The answer is simple: include coding for mobile versions of your websites and other online marketing content (developing apps for your online and electronic products should not be far from your mind at this point) so when people access your company on their mobile devices, they can have the same great experience they had three hours previously on their computer or in your store. Admittedly, putting it into action is a bit more complicated, especially for me, since I might be the very antithesis of a coder. We’ll leave that to the techies out there.

Additionally, when considering your social media marketing plan, make sure you take into account that some content posted on Twitter and Facebook is not accessible on mobile devices. Successful brand development depends largely on your ability to ensure your customers’ experiences translate from one medium and channel to the others. Consistency is key with all the different media out there.

So, while I do still think it’s outrageous that I can talk to a metal box and it will actually retrieve information and perform tasks for me, I concede that I’m pretty sure these droid-like devices (totally unintentional pun — really) aren’t going to be disappearing anytime soon. We had better adjust and start adapting our ways to welcome in the newest recruits to our online PR and marketing strategies or we just may find ourselves up a creek not too long from now.