TopRank Digital Marketing News

How do you feel about social media, particularly as it relates to your brand?

Better put, how would you feel about social media marketing if you knew search engines took your company’s social activity into account when determining your search ranking?

Hallie Mummert of Target Marketing recently wrote an excellent piece titled Search: Get Real About Real Time SEO.  The article, featuring quotes from TopRank Online Marketing® CEO Lee Odden, opens with an example of a real time search conducted in the light of recent riots in Oakland, CA:

So many business blogs suffer from tactical execution without understanding the power of search engine optimization and social media for attracting traffic and engaging customers. The following presentation outlines how TopRank Online Marketing worked with it’s own blog Online Marketing Blog and with a B2B marketing client to  achieve phenomenal increases in reach, traffic and a positive effect on the bottom line.

TopRank will be offering a new set of TopRank Guides specifically focused on B2B Social Media, B2B Blogging and B2B SEO. We’ll also be conducting several webinars to explain these guides and how best to use them.

In a recent post, Online Marketing Blog equates content and links to the Yin and Yang of any healthy Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program. Post author, TopRank® Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden, states, “Active content creation, promotion and social participation are essential for building a significant and relevant inbound link footprint on the web.”

As such, blog and social media marketing related tactics are no longer simply additional options to consider when fleshing out an online strategy.  They are now vital tools required to get the job done.

If an online marketing program were to be compared to an airplane, one could make the analogy that the left wing is a strong Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program.

Important as it may be, a left wing alone will not complete the elements needed to launch an airplane, just as SEO alone will not be enough to make up an entire online marketing program.  As social media becomes more prevalent, a social media marketing strategy becomes the right wing to help the online marketing program launch and maintain flight.

Below are three ways social media marketing helps support an online marketing program:

Online distribution of optimized press releases is a vital and impactful component of any holistic digital marketing program. As reported by Online Marketing Blog, multiple studies document that consumers and journalists search for and read news releases online, making online press release distribution a tactic that can influence everything from media exposure to website traffic to sales.

PRWeb, named by TopSEOs as the top press release distribution company, is perhaps the first provider that comes to mind when companies choose to supplement their marketing mix with online news release distribution.  When companies distribute releases through PRWeb, they trust that their content will benefit from being posted to a search engine optimal site that possesses a high degree of brand recognition.

Much like trying to literally capture lightning in a bottle, haphazardly inserting social media tactics into a marketing plan in an attempt to force customer connection can be inefficient at best and dangerous at worst. In the article below, originally published in Target Marketing, TopRank® Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden offers three tactics that ensure better connection with customers on the social web:

The buzz surrounding companies investing in social media marketing to reach consumers has created a lot of attention for sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the recently popular Foursquare. Millions of consumers are spending their time online with social networking and media sharing sites instead of other media.

Whether you’re launching a new product or a new blog, reaching early adopters is essential.

Early adopters may be small in number – for example, only 11% of web users know how to use RSS. But this small group packs a big punch. Using the RSS example, those 11% of RSS subscribers are by and large active web publishers.

By attracting the attention of this early adopter crowd, you can achieve:

• Search Benefits: Early adopters make up the “Linkerati,” a group of web influencers who regularly link to worthwhile content from their highly trafficked websites and blogs. In most cases, the more quality links to your website or blog, the better the search visibility.

As social media helps to boost online awareness for an ever-expanding list of companies, it poses the simultaneous challenge of measurement.  In an interview with eMarketer, Carol Kruse, Vice President of Global Interactive at Coca-Cola, stated, “Before you have ROI, you have to really understand how social media is driving your business.”

For B2B marketing programs, marked by traditionally longer lead times, the social media measurement challenge becomes even more pronounced. In essence, how can a company connect the dots between the online awareness generated by social media marketing and eventual sales?

Digital marketing’s importance in driving the success of a business cannot be overstated.  In a previous post, data from a recent eMarketer survey cited Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and paid search as the most effective tactics for generating conversions, according to senior level marketing executives.

Being found online quickly, whether via organic or paid search results, becomes even more critical for companies with a selective client base.  One such example is Archway, a company that caters its services to the Fortune 1000.

For more than 50 years, Archway has provided Fortune 1000 companies with marketing fulfillment services, including the execution and delivery of Point-of-Purchase (POP) signage and inventory management.  Many notable companies working with Archway have been engaged with the company for several years.

In data cited by Forrester Research, US search marketing spend approached nearly $16 million in 2009. Per the graph below, this number is expected to rise exponentially, nearly doubling in size by 2014:

The reason behind this rapidly increasing budget allocation can be summed up succinctly and powerfully: return on investment. In a survey by eMarketer, 53% of senior level marketing executives across multiple industries point to Search Engine Optimization as the most effective online marketing tactic for generating conversions, while 49% point to paid search.