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.
- Marshall Sponder, Senior Web Analyst, Monster.com
- Breanna Wigle, CRM Manager, Military Advantage
- Edmund Wong, Vice President, Strategy, iCrossing
- Todd Parsons, Co-founder & CPO, BuzzLogic.com
- Rob Key, CEO, Converseon
- Look at your referrer logs and breakout Conversational Media
- Look into data or let Google do it via site trends
- 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.
- 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
