Yes You Can! Making SEO With Social Work For Your B2B Brand

transcript

Yes You Can!Making SEO With Social Work

For Your B2B Brand

Marc Engelsman @marc_engelsman

Director, Strategy & AnalyticsDigital Brand Expressions 1

Reasons You Should Belong to SEMPO• Expand Your Knowledge• Engage With Industry

Leaders• Maximize Your Career Growth• Grow Your Business• Save Money

Sponsors and Partners

Housekeeping

What We’ll Cover Today

• Getting on the same page about SEO• Why SEO with social is the way to go• How to make SEO with social work for your B2B brand

Getting buy-in and collaboration from your marketing, content, sales and technology teams

Establishing measurable goals (and how they will be tracked and measured)

Creating and curating engaging content• A few case studies

How Many of You Are…

• Working at B2B companies?• Working at agencies?• Not doing any real (ongoing) SEO or social?• Doing SEO but not social?• Doing Social but not SEO?• Doing both?

SEO 2013: More Complex Than Ever

Published in:

SEO 2013: Ongoing Offsite is Key

On Website SEO

OffWebsite

Technical adjustmentsCompetitive researchKeyword researchDomain researchKeyword mapping

Content CreationContent CurationContent Distribution:• Directory listings• Traditional link

building• Social engagement• Social link building

Links Are Still Important…

SEOmoz 2011 Search Engine (Google) Algorithm Ranking Factors

…But Social Is Important, Too

Published in:

Togetherness is a Win

Top 2 Sources—Perfect Together

Social Use By Companies

B2B Marketers Social Media Preferences

Benefits of Social for B2B Marketers*

• Over 56% of B2B marketers acquired new business partnerships through social media (compared to 45% of B2C marketers)

• Nearly 60% of B2B marketers saw improved search rankings from their social efforts (compared to 50% of B2C marketers)

• B2B marketers are more able to gather marketplace insights from their social efforts (nearly 69% vs. 60% of B2C marketers)

• The one area where B2B marketers significantly lag behind their B2C counterparts is in developing a loyal fan base. 63% of B2C marketers found social media helped them develop loyal fans, compared to only 53% of B2B marketers.

*Source: How B2B Marketers Use Social Media: New Research, Phil Mershon, SocialExaminer.com 4/24/12, see links in Resources section

So What Is SEO With Social?

• Strategically leveraging social media marketing to support SEO goals

• Controversial: see the comments following Veronica Fielding’s Fast Company post on SEO with social

• Why the uproar? It’s still early, difficult to draw direct conclusions Still possible for SEO to succeed without social

• Though getting increasingly difficult to generate search-engine sanctioned links without it

It’s A LOT of work• Takes time, $, and persistence

It requires teamwork

SEO with Social Isn’t Easy…

• You will need to work hard to unite your resources and manage through silo-ed objectives and plans SEO team Social media team PR/Communications Analytics Internal funders and supporters

And So Most Companies Are Not Integrating

B2B Lags Behind B2C On Integration

Internal Stakeholders & Social

• Convincing people that social is worth their input will be a challenge in most organizations Still relatively new Quantification and connection to bottom line almost impossible

• Social isn’t “sales” channel (at least not for most) Demonstrating success will be key

• Agreeing on success measures, even qualitative ones, is critical

• Convincing the money people to fund it will be challenging, too HiPPO = Highest Paid Person’s Opinion If they don’t believe, check out your competition

Important!

• If you focus on the search engines, you will annoy and alienate people (and lose search engine attention)

• Stay focused on connecting and engaging with people, and the search engines will follow

Comparing B2C & B2B SEO With Social

B2C• Large # potential customers• Channel is direct interaction

with consumers • Small % of audience makes

engagement #s look great• Engagement #s high, lots of

activity• Engagement easier, sharing

constant and fluid—personal decision to participate

• Wide variety of appropriate offers

B2B• Defined, limited # customers• Sales people = intermediary

between social channel & buyers• #Fans, #Followers smaller• Engagement harder to come by,

fewer people available to “socialize” from work

• Opinions shared reflect on organization, more cautious in sharing with brands in channel

• Offers need to be appropriate to biz decision makers

How Do You Create Social Signals?

1 Create (and curate) unique, relevant, shareable content

2 Identify “distribution” channels: blogs, social media, websites, etc.

3 Create interest and excitement around the content, get many others to share it and talk about it, too

What Content Works Best?

Integrating SEO and Social—The Right Mix

Integrated Them = Inbound Context Marketing

And Context Marketing Helps Pick Metrics/KPIs

SEO with Social/Context Marketing Metrics

SEO With Social/Context Marketing Metrics

Find/Explore/Research

Buy/Act Now

Welcome/Welcome Back

Relevant Info

(Other)