Social Search can be used to drive traffic, conversions, and increase ROI by monitoring conversations happening in cyberspace, often in real time. By using buzz-monitoring tools such as Buzzlogic, search professionals can be very effective in finding influencers within online conversations and reaching out to them. As one example of a few that will be presented, learn how Military.com leverages social media and buzz-monitoring tools, together with a solid understanding of business goals, to increase profitability.
Moderator:
Speakers:
Two top level ideas on how to measure Social Media.
- Look at your referrer logs and breakout Conversational Media
- Look into data or let Google do it via site trends
Idea: Have CMO’s work closely with Web Analyst
- One of the challenges is what do we do with the data once we have it. Rob indicates that 5 of the top 10 sites online today are Social Media sites. The question is, what are the people talking about and where are the talking about it?
- He is outlining “How to Design a Social Media Strategy”
- Step 1 is to Listen - What is the external tone
- Mining the Universe - First Know What You Want To Know
- What is the Volume of Conversation?
- Who are the Influentials? - You should only be contributing 10% of the time overall
- Report on Voices
- Report on Relationship Topics
- Report on Competitors/Features
- Report by Cloud Tags
- How to use the data?
- An Extension of Customer Service ( Rob sites a BusinessWeek article) & Reputation Mgmt.
- Search Results - Engagment Strategy
- Listen, Plan, Engage (Graco Case Study is being sited)
- Where does this all go?
- Trending - We have ___% of positive sentiment and are mapping this conversation trend over time
- Social Media Monitoring and Analysis will Flatten
- Have a Grand Unified Vision - Sales, Brand Tracking, Conversion Analytics, Traffic & Conversation Monitoring.
Notes from Todd & Breanna who have prepared a case study on Military.com:
- Site Focus: Connecting Military Population with appropriate communities
- Goals: Increase awareness and drive traffic
- Fact: Social Media visitors do convert higher than baseline visitors
- DoD Buzz
- Strategy: Isolate the influencers and reach passionate readers of military defense news and information
- Goal: Increase product awareness to the (new) influencers and their audiences
- Engaged BuzzLogic
- Uncover Conversations utilizing keyword data and break into categories - then cross reference to social media outlets
- There was a set of blogs that were very rigorus on topical point
- Rank the influencal site based on content
- Identify the influencer networks of ad placement - influencer to influencer connection
- Campaign Overview
- Create compelling, informative and clear call to action
- Ran on a cross section of 250 blogs including influencers
- Results:
- 86% Higher CTR than historical average
- Social Media Users Took Action - 5.3% lift in conversion rate overall (RSS feeds and Email Subscriptions)
- 60% higher new visitors than the site average
- the SM ads performed an avg. of 6.25% better than the site historical average.
- Key Observations/Learnings
- Active conversations about specific topics attract passionate audiences.
- Social search is different than web search it’s gets you closer to keyword search intent
- Influencer’s and their network increase ad performance
- Conversation’s offer a new window on consumer psychology
- Social Media ia about selecting trust sources and trusting in what they say.
Notes from Edmund:
- What to track
- Analyze page views over time - since many forums are optimized for search, engagement is highly visible…forever: SEO continues to offer new visitors over time
- Track links posted and clicks received by the site (Using match back through Omniture data)
- Calculation of a Social Media CPM is possible
- Categorize and analyze discussion topics
Many companies find it difficult to use web analytics for more than reporting and ad-hoc investigations. By defining requirements, roles, tasks, and benchmarks, an efficient process replaces one-off requests. This session covers practical work flows that you can quickly implement to see improved, consistent returns from your data. This sets a platform for experience-based learning that helps a company to set standards, anticipate a build-cycle or campaign refresh, and prioritize search marketing efforts.
Moderator:
Speakers:
- Craig Danuloff, Founder & President, Commerce360, Inc.
- Brian Cosgrove, Site-Side Analytics Engineer, AvenueA / Razorfish
- Heather Dougherty, Analyst, Hitwise
- Michael Stebbins, CEO & Founder, Market Motive
- Brett Crosby, Senior Manager, Google Analytics, Google
- One SEO implementation idea is to categorize areas of your website pages to analyze by sectional intent
- Filtering is also a great way to look through statistics
- Requests today are almost all data-driven. How do we make sure the data is relevant? Web analysts are good at what they do…let them do it. Analyst insights are funneled throughout organizations and various roles. The key role that seems to be missing in the operations/project manager. This person is key in allowing the time and place to install process. Here is an example of a process: 4 weeks of analysis > 2 weeks in business requirements > then the project manager takes over > analyst waits for the data usually focusing on other projects.
- Specific Reports
- How many pages on my site are paid landing pages?
- Make sure your SEO pages are also effective in conversion
- Create user bench marks
- Install platforms correctly to ensure great data
- Identify actions you can take
- Coordinate resources
- Separate analytics cycles
- She indicates that she will be focusing on some of HitWise’s new tools
- Her first point is to stay ahead of trends
- Understanding reliance on paid vs. organic search within specific industries
- Also understanding the same for any competitor websites
- Determine which search engines are sending traffic to competitors
- Measure the impact of brand awareness upon competitors organic traffic
- Compare where people are searching to where they are clicking
- Improve keyword list
- Identify who is doing well in sponsored listings and learn from their copy
- Learn from the best optimizers (or partners)
- Determine user intent - purchase or news?
- Integrate search findings across your organization
Notes from Michael Stebbins
- What’s in your data - Make sure you are collecting the right data - look at the trends
- Bounce Rate
- Average Time
- Page Views
- Conversion Ratio
- Cost of Visitor
- Revenue per Visitor
- What is your process - The Grim Reaper
- Tactical Question: Which 10% are my ads not performing
- Possible Answers: High cost, bad roi, low engagement, low conversion
- If yes, then discontinue
- pull data - look at ROI or ROAS
- look at the highest cost campaign - start at the bottom
- check sample size
- and review the data points above
- review and create action plan
- Look at www.customerintent.com
- Tools
- Check commercial intent tool: adCenter labs by Microsoft
- Google adWords keyword tool
- Back to Adcenter to look at demographic and seasonal data - Messaging (See Persuasion Architecture from Bryan Eisenberg)
- Look at Google Ad Planner tool
- Create 3 copies of ads to rotate evenly - 1 copy of the challenger
- 4 years ago today Google approached Urchin at the Google Dance about acquiring them
- Check the book “a/b Always Be Testing”
- What is the history of Web Analytics
- Today analytics is in the forefront of business thought leadership wanting their own report.
Day two starts off with an opportunity to learn about how the global market represents a huge opportunity for those who can master the nuances of locals and languages. We are hearing about how the leading global B2B search marketers are sharing their advice on how to optimize global search efforts, manage foreign contractors, and track ROI in multiple currencies.
Moderator:
Speakers:
The consensus of the group says to roll out one country at a time and focus on metrics that are very specific to that particular country. What works in the U.S. might not be what works internationally. Translation is also key. One question came up in regards to doing business in a particular language and meeting the expectations of that visitor. The panelists indicate that international results should meet the expectations of the keyword intent.
A summary of the session would be to forget what we know from a U.S. perspective and look at each country with a strategic marketing plan focused on meeting expectations and key metrics. This includes media networks as well as local site expectations.
Jeff Rohrs and Patricia are taking feedback for new SES international sessions in the speaker ready room later today.
- It seems that Obi-Wan Kenobi is missing and if you find him you get a free pass to any SES event of your choice.
- The session is being streamed live via WebmasterRadio.fm if you want to listen.
- All attendees have received a copy of Lee’s book.
Lee indicates that he has always wanted to write about search. As the Internet evolves, comment threads became an area of interest to Lee. Crowd laughs as the moderator gives legal disclaimer that Lee’s comments are his not the conference’s. Lee is really interested in what the blogisphere is all about. He is focused on the negativity that is posted on the web. His research is founded on his personal experience responding to these harsh and negative comments.
The discussion has moved into the realm of unprofessional writers taking over and degrading those that are “real” writers. I’m afraid I fall into this category. Big business is trying to work with the influencers to help them manage their reputation online. Lee says this is hard due to the volume of information. Maybe we should focus on what they actually are doing, the attention span is short online and become forgotten quickly. The audience seems to agree.
