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| Photo Credit: TheJigsawSEO.in |
In The New Rules of Marketing and PR (2015) by David Meerman Scott, he mentions towards the end of the book, "this entire book is about search engine marketing." (Scott, 396) He isn't wrong -- everything that we've learned throughout both this course and through the readings in this outstanding book all tie in with social media and the whole space. "Search engine marketing means using search engines to reach your buyers directly. Search engines includes general search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo!, as well as vertical market search engines that are specific to your industry or to people you are trying to reach. (Scott, 396) This is true, and social media is a large part of that.
Perhaps the most important lesson that we've learned is that you need to listen on social media. This not only increases your brand's awareness online, but it also works to contribute to search engine marketing. One of the important keys here is that for this to happen, brands need to provide great engagement and even better content online, for their loyal fans and followers. "The more valuable content you can share with your fans and followers, the greatest the trust and reputation you'll build with them. Share your expertise without expectation or marketing-speak, and you'll create an even better name for yourself," said Dave Kerpen, author of Likeable Social Media. (Kerpen, 138) He rightfully continues by mentioning, "simply finding helpful articles online and sharing them with your community will provide value that current and prospective customers will appreciate." (Kerpen, 138) By sharing great content and value on a regular basis to your fans and followers on social media, it will send positive signals to search engines like Google and Bing, thus is the relationship with search engine marketing.
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| Photo Credit: Content Maximiser |
I can speak to this personally, as clients that come on for our agency are there for various services to help them rank higher in the search engines. As someone who helps run various social marketing campaigns, I can speak to how big of a component this is. By keeping networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ active for a company online, it only helps with their search engine marketing efforts.
Another topic of discussion this week pertains to landing pages. There are plenty online that are good, which will get users to jump to the call-to-action that the company has placed there. However, there are others where the experience isn't always so pleasant. While it's clear what makes a good landing page for a website, and what doesn't, and one thing is very true, and it's a point that David Meerman Scott brings up, when he mentions that good landing pages can sometimes be few and far between.
"Most people focus a great deal of time on keyword and phrase selection, and they also do a good job of ensuring that their organization ranks highly for those phrases by optimizing the site and/or purchasing search engine advertising. But most organizations are terrible at building a landing page -- the place people go after they click on a search hit." (Scott, 401) He's right -- there are too many landing pages that are way too text heavy. For example, one site that I frequent, NintendoAge.com, definitely doesn't have the best landing page, as it's overly text heavy, and they're working way too hard on trying to work in way too many key phrases. In the end, it's a bit of a drag for the user.
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| Photo Credit: Nintendo.com |
The above, however, straight from Nintendo.com, shows what I feel is a great landing page. There's one focus and one focus only -- the release of their new console, the "Nintendo Switch." It's visually appealing, there's a call-to-action, and it's much more enticing to make a potential purchase on here, compared to other sites.
What do you think?
References
Kerpen, D. (2015). Likeable Social Media. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Scott, D.M. (2015). The New Rules of Marketing & PR. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Hi Mike,
ReplyDeleteGreat discussion this week. Thanks for reminding us that listening is a great tool to use as part of the overall SEM strategy. As Edwards points out the positive impact listening has on SEM in Search Engine Watch "marketing and public relations: 1) Uncover conversations about brand, industry, products and respond in real time. 2) Leverage topic insights to improve their content, SEO, and PPC strategy." I think if you don't know what is being said about the industry or your brand or product, it becomes a bit of a challenge to provide relevant content in an up to date time frame. Alternatively when you do listen, then you can tailor your content accordingly to meet the needs of your customers.
I enjoyed reading your points on landing pages as well, I think your comment about the text heavy landing pages being the reason so many are unsuccessful is on point and very relevant. I further think that many companies believe that we have a viewer, great, lets give them all this info right away. What they fail to realize is that a viewer might now even know what they are looking for and so it is the marketers job to point them in the right direction. Mainly by using the landing page to convert them to the actual sale or place they are intent to go on the site. It's like the landing page is a gateway of sorts.
Lena
Reference
Edwards, Victoria. (2012, July 13). Why Social Media Listening is Important for Brands. Search Engine Watch. Retrieved form https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2274254/why-social-media-listening-is-important-for-brands
That's exactly right. It's too much, too soon. That's one reason we regularly tell clients what's wrong with their social media strategy -- it's too much, all the time, where their content is always way too promotional. That applies here, with people giving way too much on the landing pages, and I should add, they often have too many focuses. Landing pages should be much more inviting to users -- like with the example I have above, the landing page for the official website, not a third party site, has a better strategy. They draw you in with one single call-to-action, not several.
DeleteHi Mike,
ReplyDeleteYour post tied in our lesson on listening to SEM quite well. I liked the excerpt from Kerpen about providing valuable content. The simplest form of SEM is based on your brand and reputation. And the best way to gain a positive social media reputation is to provide valuable content. Morgan (2017) suggests a tip on how to provide this information. He says, "Create valuable content like blog articles, eBooks, videos, reports, comment and review sections, etc. Help your website visitors solve problems" (para 4). In order to attract your identified buyer personas you must position your brand as a leader and problem solver. This will help build trust. Similarly, promising to help a website visitor will also generate leads on a landing page.
References
Morgan, T. (2017). Attracting Customers with Search Engine Marketing Content Plan (SEM). Retrieved on March 5th 2017 from, http://responsify.com/attracting-customers-search-engine-marketing-content-plan-sem.
Thanks for those great points! Creating valuable content sure is important, especially in different forms, like you mentioned. I've found that the best campaigns that I've personally worked on have found more success (both through SEO/SEM and overall brand awareness) when they've incorporated many different mediums. For example, things like blog articles and eBooks are great, valuable resources for users, which can also generate links for the source and improve their search rankings. This definitely applies to things like videos too, which are now more popular than ever.
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