Download - Advanced Social Media Tactics For Search Engine Optimization (SMX Stockholm 2012) - Genero
Mar 24, 2012
Advanced Social Media Tactics
A hands-on campaign idea
Me
Jonathan Björkskog Partner and head of search at Genero.
Genero A digital agency helping clients to become the leader in their
area by using mostly digital medias. A Nordic agency working on
the Finnish and Swedish markets this far. 21 doers, based in
Helsinki.
Mar 24, 2012
Combine Social Media and SEO
First some basics
Social media is not replacing SEO Both are good in their own way.
Always work with the website as the base Everything made in social media should be made on the base.
First some basics
Build social media campaigns that will benefit you for a long
time Not just the typical two week campaign that then is forgotten.
Social shares are NOT replacing real links Even if people might be telling you so. Both are good in their own way though.
Mar 24, 2012
What if we could
Use Social Media for getting REAL
links?
The Idea for a combined campaign
Could we use fans for content creation and link building? In my opinion, absolutely.
But some things are needed… • Control over the SEO part.
• Control over the tech part.
• Control over the social media part.
• Control over the content creation part.
• A LOT of trust from the client.
The campaign idea
1. Grow a big audience. On Facebook. That’s where the people are now. Do you already have fans?
Congratulations, you can skip this step!
2. Let the audience create content and links for winning prices. The idea is that the content with most likes wins things now and then.
3. Get access to unlimited stories for keeping fans engaged. You might be able to run this for a long time.
Visually
(Your
audience)
Your
site
Forums
Blogs
Niche websites
1. Audience
creates
content
2. Audience
shares their
content
3. You get
REAL links AND
social shares
Social medias
Step 1 – Grow the audience
This is the easy part…
- Create competitions for fans, with big enough, relevant prizes.
- Buy Facebook ads and target the relevant groups of people.
Invest in getting some fans, you will need them later, and even if it does not pay off
now, it will soon. Do what works for you, competitions and giveaways works in the
most niches.
Step 2 – “Use” the fans
This is the fun part…
Make a new competition, where fans should create content in
your Facebook app-tab for winning prizes.
Users creates “stories” on your facebook page app, stories that automatically
ends up as content on your website. The “story” with most likes (or votes) every
month wins prizes.
Step 3 – See the content and links
rolling in
Now, THIS is the really fun part…
Engaged fans will do everything for winning.
They will blog about their content, they will post links to their content in forums, they
will get every friend to like and share their content. Not everyone will do that. But a
lot will.
Think about how much more time your armada of followers have for spreading the
word than you!
Mar 24, 2012
Oh, sounds good,
let´s take a look at a
case study
Case: Dog and cat food in Finland
I guess most of you are not working in Finland anyway…
Step 1, building audience
The audience were built through competitions, giveaways and a
charity Christmas campaign. Achieved ~30 - 40 000 fans.
It says: “Like us and get a free piece
of dog-food”, for you that are not
fluent in Finnish..
Bonus. Collect email-addresses for newsletter after liking the page as well
Step 2, Activating the audience
Through an app where the fans should tell a story about how
their own dog liked this kind of food. The story with most likes
every month got a 200€ gift card.
The audience was activated through wall posts, Facebook ads
and Google display ads.
Step 2, Activating the audience
What the fans needed to do to participate:
• Choose the breed of the dog.
• Upload a photo of their dog, write a title and the story.
• Accept that their content appears in the company’s marketing, and submit.
Dog name
Breed
Story
Picture
Accept
Submit
Collect what you
need, but not more.
More fields higher bounce rate, less fields less data.
Keep a good balance
that suits your
target group.
The first month… The winning story
got 691 likes on
Facebook.
Text length in
stories was often
~300 words.
Another month… The winning story
got 251 likes on
Facebook.
Text length in
stories was often
~300 words.
Another month… The winning story
got 357 likes on
Facebook.
Text length in
stories was often
~300 words.
Stories, stories, stories
Mar 24, 2012
Sales increased, this was already a
good SOCIAL MEDIA campaign.
But that’s not the end. We are still on SEARCH marketing expo..
The SEO effects
Remember the categorization per
breed? All breeds get their own page (url) with mostly
user and auto generated content.
When anyone searching for how to feed
almost any breed, these pages are appearing
in first page in Google
Example
The SEO effects
Remember when talking about people sharing their stories?
(Domains
linking to the
site)
The links flow
Category page
A story Forums
Blogs
Niche websites
Social medias A story
A story
Category page
Frontpage, brand
How to continue? There is not really an end.
Grow the “breed” pages. One month, have a photo competition. Another month, have
people telling what their dog likes to play with. And so on…
The most common breeds will naturally get the most content and will become the
strongest.
The breed pages contains EXACTLY what a searcher is looking for, REAL testimonials.
Finally, the breed pages will probably rank for almost anything that includes that
breed.
Other bonuses? Yep!
1. We now use user generated stories as printed product text on
packaging.
2. We have a lot of stories to post on Facebook, to keep fans
engaged.
3. Stories now comes almost naturally with less and less advertising
every month.
4. When we have everything we need about a breed, we can easily change
the categorization.
Campaigns like this
The real social part is missing when users have not made the likeable content themselves. Therefore
they get less engagement and less user promotion.
If you want to do this Make up a good way of categorizing the content you get.
You do not want 10 000 uncategorized stories.
Make sure you are able to handle the tech-part yourself, or get a really trusted partner.
Keep the forms on Facebook. People does not spam as much there when they are in it with
their own name.
Have patience. Building an audience takes time, coding takes time, ranking takes time.
Afraid of low quality content? Use a subdomain or a separate domain for being 100%
sure to avoid Panda killing your main site.
Some last words I would like to see someone do this in more competitive niches like
gambling, travelling and for e-commerce.
Consider having a fallback voting system for the day when Facebook knocks your door and
bans your vote-by-liking.
Choose voting system based on target group. (Facebook like buttons are easy to trick for
tech-savvy-people)
Don’t you have fans, or are you in a niche where fans are impossible to get? Try the same
with email-lists or only AdWords.
Thank you! Questions? Ask whatever during the day.
http://jonathanbjorkskog.com
http://twitter.com/jonathanbj
http://www.genero.fi
Want to do this? Apply for working with us.