Entries Tagged 'social media' ↓
August 24th, 2008 — social media
No industry is unsuitable for social media, right?
That’s what folks in my field would like to believe - and it’s what I’ve counseled clients. But I will confess I’ve harbored my secret doubts about some industries being likely to embrace, or gain much, from the world of blogging, Twittering, forums, YouTube, podcasting, Facebook and the like.
And one of those industries I doubted was farming…
I like it when I’m wrong. (It means I’m learning!) The other day I came across an online agricultural community, or I should say, communities!
Farmers in the ‘Dell’
The power of Web 2.0 - blogs, forums, photo and video sharing, podcasting, Twitter and such - gives new and very modern meaning to “Farmer in the Dell.” By Dell, I’m referring to the lauded blog created by the computer maker a couple of years ago to respond to consumer negativity (known as “Dell hell”). At the time, it was a groundbreaking response from a corporation, and helped pave the way for transparency - and Web 2.0 use - embraced by many industries today.
We’ve come a long way, baby… and apparently, farmers haven’t been left behind.
Welcome to Moo Media, which includes:
I owe a humble apology to farmers and ranchers for my stereotype of them as inept in social media… Shame on me for a lack of imagination.
July 29th, 2008 — social media
I have a friend whose sole job is to measure the success of social media - that is, the metrics on what prospects and customers are thinking and feeling and sharing in the social sharing/networking world of Web 2.0…
I hear his next gig is threading a camel through the eye of a needle!
But seriously, his job as a “social media analyst” is no easy feat, although not unattainable. It just takes a very different approach than gathering hard traffic data (# unique visitors, page views, etc.)
Social media has “softer,” more nebulous metrics - that being the moods and resulting actions taken by people. You need your web marketer to “take the temperature” of the blogosphere/forums/videosphere/networking sphere as it relates to your products or services.
Bad chatter is better than no chatter at all
Sometimes the mood online is warm/fuzzy, and you get to watch the growth of “fansumers” for your goods. Niiice. But what about the naysayers?
You want to know about them, too - and respond in the appropriate social media channels. Think of this space as a giant, free focus group: Who’s hot under the collar, and why? What’s leaving consumers cold - and how might their frosty reception be proactively engaged with to address the concerns?
Then measure those social media sentiments against what was being experienced last week/month/year. And - this is important - put those feelings-translated-into-actions firmly in context, looking at all possible variables.
Rob Clark, of Social Media Group, recognized this when he blogged:
“…your podcast had 1,000 downloads today, but it resulted in only a handful of positive leads for your sales staff. Last week, with fraction the number of downloads, you had twice the results. The reason being that the bump in traffic came from a pop culture site with millions of visitors that found an aspect of your program amusing, and linked to it. None of those people were, nor would they ever be, customers of your custom molded pipes. And this upcoming weekend being the big plumbing supplies conference, your typical audience is likely on the road.”
The metrics of sentiment
Social media consultants (good ones) look beyond straight numbers, to find patterns of behaviour, and a client’s share of online conversation (benchmarked against conversation about your competitors) - as well as sentiment valuation: negative, positive or neutral online reviews of services and products.
Speaking of which, I recently came across a fascinating bit of research being done by - who else? - Google in its “Study on Sentiment Summation.” [PDF] The paper defines a new delivery model for aggregating search results as “a trend toward systems that can automatically summarize opinions from a set of reviews and display them in an easy to process manner.”
Given the massive, and continuing, growth of user-generated content, figuring out how to sum up the feelings of those users is getting more and more important.
Stay tuned for search results that come with smells (a floral squirt means “I love this”) or sounds (raspberry-blow for “this sucks”)…?!
July 10th, 2008 — social media
I used to work at a social media agency that advised companies on how to leverage the power of online conversations happening in the world of social networking/sharing.
I came to the job with experience in SEO, and was surprised to see that SEO had virtually no place in their social media consulting work…. to the extent that writing and other aspects were inadvertently counterproductive to SEO at times.
My coworkers at this company were connected online in so many ways it blew my mind: they have accounts on FriendFeed, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Delicious (to name a few), and they maintain an interoffice wiki and multiple blogs - you name it, they do it in the social media realm. But I never understood the snob factor that came along with belonging to an elite inner circle of the social media-savvy.
Social media snobbery
To the owner of that agency, social media ruled the web world; I sensed that she felt SEO wasn’t as “pure” and “noble” as the democratic and open ways of social sharing.
Sadly, I feel that her clients were missing out on leveraging the power of search engine optimization. If you don’t get found online, who’s going to be talking about you in the social media universe?
I could really relate to blogger Jennifer Laycock’s insightful post, “Why the Social Media World NEEDS to Understand SEO” at Search Engine Guide, where she notes that:
“The true potential for massive reward comes when someone who really understands the value of conversation in social media comes together with someone who understands the technical aspects of search engine optimization. Otherwise, we have campaigns that miss their full potential.”
Laycock uses as a case in point a corporation that scored big points on social media but dropped the ball on SEO:
“Lenovo and Ogilvy have gone to the trouble of recruiting 100 different bloggers from more than two dozen countries to cover the Olympics for them. That’s a lot of link potential… Unfortunately, the site was built without search engine optimization in mind and they won’t be able to reap any of the benefits of all those links that could have pointed their way.”
Blogging alone won’t get you heard
As a social media analyst, the only chance I had to bring my SEO skills to the table was the training material I developed to teach a corporation how to blog: I taught them how to keep keywords in mind when writing their blog titles and showed them some free tools for keyword research.
But it was too little info on SEO - and the site design we did of their group blog was not SEO-compatible and the content not search engine optimized. Link building strategies? None.
Why can’t we be friends?
At the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Toronto last month, I attended the “Social Media Successes” workshop - curious to see how social media experts aligned themselves with search engine strategies. They didn’t, on the whole. Rather, I heard the usual social media gushing about the wonders of conversation and transparency and sharing - and nothing about how social media can pragmatically intersect with SEO and SEM. (The only exception was panelist Stephan Spencer and his social media “hacks” for optimizing one’s profile in various social sites to build links back to your own site, which is a vital piece of SEO.)
So now my goal is to be a workshop panelist at next year’s SES conference to speak about the harmonious relationship possible - and preferable - between SEO and social media. I’ll call it: “Why Can’t We be Friends?” It’s just good business for us to get along.
