Are You Ready for the Reality of Social Media?

Social media seems like a marketer’s dream come true. It’s one of the few forums where people willingly talk about your brand and products; they reach out to your company, share stories, recommend you to their friends—all without being asked to or paid! No matter how hard you try, that kind of engagement can’t be forced, it just has to happen. Social networking sites are where customers and brands are all on the same playing field and great relationships can be built. However, that level playing field means that customers are just as in control of your brand as you are—what they say and share can drown out your own messaging, and sometimes that’s for the worse.

Social media is a two-way street; it requires a give and take between your company and your network. And that sometimes means taking the bad with the good. Studies have shown that customers are far more likely to share a negative experience with your brand than a positive one on a social networking site, which means when you enter the world of social media you are opening yourself up for attack and criticism. Your brand is now in the hands of your audience, and what they say can have a massive ripple effect around the social world in a matter of moments.

When it comes to social media, there is nothing more deadly than silence. When you aren’t talking, responding to questions, posting content and so forth, the only messaging going out about your brand is what your customers are saying. Hopefully, most of the time this is all positive, but bad news spread fast on social networks and one pissed off customer can quickly morph into a firestorm or negative press. Social media allows people of like interests and opinions to find and connect with one another; what are you doing to make sure your network isn’t connecting over their mutual frustration with your brand!

Above all else, it is so important that companies be open and transparent on social networking sites. The more forthright you are, the easier it is to get the in good graces of your customers. For instance, a few weeks ago FuseMail suffered a major power outage and hundreds (maybe thousands) of their customers went 24-48 hours with email. Twitter exploded with users complaining that FuseMail wasn’t giving them any idea of what was going on, what measures were being taken to fix it or how long until the issue would be resolved. Had FuseMail just kept the lines of communication open during the entire outage, customers would probably have been much more understanding. Keeping quiet cost them a lot of business.

Having a social media presence is essentially in today’s marketplace, but companies need to understand that there are a few dangerous realities they need to account for. At the end of the day, the combined voices of your audience are far more powerful than your brand could ever be, so companies have to be willing to stay open and honest with their network.

About the Author
Nick Stamoulis is the President of Brick Marketing (http://www.brickmarketing.com) a Boston ares white hat link building and social SEO solutions company. With nearly 13 years of industry experience, Nick Stamoulis shares his B2B SEO knowledge by posting SEO tips to the Brick Marketing Blog and publishing the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter, read by over 150,000 opt-in subscribers.

Non Branded Searches Can Still Be Influenced By Your Brand

In my opinion as a Boston SEO professional, one of the best things I can see happening for my SEO clients is an increase in the amount of non branded keywords that drive traffic to their site. Even incredibly long tail keywords that only drive a few visitors each month is good to see, especially when they are all unique variations of the keywords we’ve intentionally targeted with their onsite SEO and content marketing campaign. Obviously branded keywords are incredibly valuable, as an uptick in branded keyword searches means the company’s reputation and visibility is growing, both online and off. But a growth in non branded keywords tells me that their SEO is definitely on the right track.

I was recently digging through a year’s worth of analytics for one of my ecommerce SEO clients and was pleased to see a huge jump in non branded keywords from last year to this one. Their traffic had grown significantly in the year since we had taken over SEO campaign and their online sales were miles ahead of where they had been in previous years, all thanks to our SEO efforts. This particular SEO client has both multiple physical stores (mostly in one specific region) and an ecommerce site, and ships their products nationally. On a whim, I decided to dig a little deeper into their analytics and see how many of those non branded visitors were coming from their local area versus other regions cross country. I did an analysis of the top 10 non branded keywords and was amazed at what I saw; nearly 75% of the visitors that used non branded keywords to find my client’s site were still from their state! 1/3 of those were from the same region my client has physical stores in.

I realized that even though these visitors were using non branded keywords to find my client’s ecommerce site, their online and offline brand recognition was having a huge impact on their click through rate from the SERPs. My client does a lot of traditional offline marketing including newspaper ads and inserts, radio spots and television commercials. They have seasonal promotions they heavily promote across all stores, as well as unique specials at individual locations. The individual stores also get involved in the communities they operate in and work with local charities and non-profit events to give back to the community. Their local, offline brand is very strong and it’s been leaking over into the online world!

Think about it, if you were to search using a non branded keyword and a local company that you’ve heard about for years popped up in the search results, both organic and paid listings, wouldn’t you be more likely to click on that listing over another company you have never heard of? That is exactly what I think has been happening with my ecommerce client! Their offline brand value has been positively impacting their non branded SEO efforts. It just goes to show how important a strong brand is, and how everything you do offline can have a positive impact on your SEO!

About the Author
Nick Stamoulis is the President of Brick Marketing (http://www.brickmarketing.com) a white hat link building and social SEO solutions company based in Boston, MA. With nearly 13 years of industry experience, Nick Stamoulis shares his B2B SEO knowledge by posting SEO tips to the Brick Marketing Blog and publishing the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter, read by over 150,000 opt-in subscribers.

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