SEO, Paid Search and Social Media Strategy Integration #SMX Liveblog

This SMX West 2015 session (“Search and Social: Making It Happen”) features four speakers sharing their latest insights on SEO, paid search and social media:

• Janet Driscoll Miller (Present and CEO of Marketing Mojo)
• Elizabeth Marsten (PPC Director at Mercent)
• Cynthia Johnson (Director of Marketing & Social Media at RankLab)
• Graeme Jamieson (Senior manager of social and content at Merkle)

Claiming Social Profiles and Reputation Management

Don’t rely on social alone, says Cynthia Johnson — you do not own your social profiles and viral content fades quickly.

It is important to claim your social profiles; if you don’t claim your business page, Facebook and Google Plus will create pages for you. They can use/add your address, phone number, etc. and are often misinformed on everything else. Yelp also auto creates business pages. Take control of your reputation online by creating these pages yourself.

Social Reputation Management in 6 Steps

1. Search for your business and find all additional and/or incorrect pages.
2. Ask Google to combine pages or remove inaccurate profiles.
3. Verify your Google Plus profile (check to be sure that the Google Map is correct).
4. Create a local Facebook page with your company’s address and phone.
5. Let Facebook know that the created page is a duplicate of another and have the incorrect one removed.
6. Always check you score. SEO and Social media are both constantly evolving. Don’t get comfortable.

Using Social to Marry Intent with Identity

Janet Driscoll Miller is the present and CEO of Marketing Mojo. Her company decided that every time they conducted paid search, they were also going to invest in paid social.

The goal was to mirror the intent of someone’s search with someone’s identity. How do you marry intent from search with identity? You find identity on social media. 

Miller recommends looking at Facebook and LinkedIn ad targeting to compile psychographic data (in other words, insights on personality, values, opinions, attitudes, interests and lifestyles.)

As it turns out, Miller has found revenue per click and revenue per conversion are better when you integrate social ads and search ads.

For example, let’s say there’s a LinkedIn ad for health care CIOs. A user clicks on that ad (a social ad) and then arrives at a landing page for a webinar registration. A cookie uses their click-through to the landing page topic to mark them as someone who is a, or is interested in becoming a, healthcare CIO. Whether or not they sign up, they can now be retargeted on search channels with ads that relate to being or becoming a healthcare CIO.

You can also use social log-ins to your advantage. Allowing people to log into your service using social log-in gives you a lot more data about that user than if they log in using a traditional form.

Your Strategy Needs Paid Social; Organic is Dead

Elizabeth Marsten, PPC Director at Mercent, says organic social is dead. In light of the death of organic social, she advises PPC and social media teams to collaborate to make stronger ads. She encourages them to share resources. The paid team should know about the social team’s calendar and know what types of things are coming up that they can capitalize on.

Marsten’s Preferred Content Promotion Tools:

• Taboola
• Outbrain
• Shareaholoic (in beta)
• Sprout Social

Create; Boost; Push: Remarket: The “Shake and Bake” Strategy

Marsten suggests social teams try to create one piece of content that can be used in four ways:

• Share on organic social.
• Boost on social channels.
• Push through content promotion.
• Tag and bag visitors for remarketing later.

Marketers Need to Decide Between Engagement or Clicks

• Determine what “success” is.
• Run with campaigns in mind.
• Don’t forget about direct or organic. (It’s dead… but… not dead.)

Don’t Work Without Strategy; Audience Comes First

Graeme Jamieson, senior manager of social and content creation at Merkle, tells us that this week he’s heard an awful lot about keywords but he believes that keywords only tell you half the story. As a matter of fact, as consumer insights go, he thinks keywords are a bit weak.

His strategy: Audience comes first; strategies are define by client objectives; use better, broader data analysis.

It’s important that you don’t just talk about your brand; you need to understand the common ground that your brand and its desired audience share.

Keywords capture demand, and content captures imagination; both should work together and play off each other’s strengths. He recommends Fanpage Karma for content development.

Kristi Kellogg is a journalist, news hound, professional copywriter, and social (media) butterfly. Currently, she is a senior SEO content writer for Conde Nast. Her articles appear in newspapers, magazines, across the Internet and in books such as "Content Marketing Strategies for Professionals" and "The Media Relations Guidebook." Formerly, she was the social media editor at Bruce Clay Inc.

See Kristi's author page for links to connect on social media.