The F8 Developer Conference didn’t reveal much about Facebook. Oh wait, my bad. It kind of did. After leaving the San Francisco conference stage last Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg effectively tossed aside the social network you’ve come to know and love, at least most of the time. Unless you’ve been living under one of Mark’s old, worn-out hoodies, you know about the changes that make up the new Facebook. But just in case, here they are in broad strokes:
- The integration of Spotify and Turntable.fm making Facebook a premier entertainment hub. Somewhere, Justin Timberlake is cursing Sean Parker. ‘Why oh why did I play you?’
- A complete profile redesign and increased user control over news feeds
- The introduction of “Timeline” or what Mark continuously referred to as, and I’m paraphrasing, the story of your life. It enables users to add photos and events making your profile look like a really cool Apple commercial
Pretty exciting stuff. Actually for marketers, it’s all a little frightening. Why? Because it ups the ante on the whole notion of compelling content. We’ve all heard the term engagement ad nauseum. Content has to be engaging blah blah blah. Now, it really does. For content to hit a user’s news feed, it has to be amazingly compelling, authoritative and relevant. It has to mean something. And that brings us to the world famous Like.
In one of the unintentionally funnier moments of the Zuckerberg presentation – Andy Samberg wins the funny award hands down – Mark announced verbs are coming to Facebook. Yes, verbs! Though tempting, the follow-up question shouldn’t be ‘What about adverbs and pronouns?’ but rather ‘What does this mean for the Like button?’ Certainly, the Like lost a little luster on Thursday. By adding buttons like Read, Watched, Listened, brand ambassadors will be able to go further with endorsements. Advertisers and marketers obsessed with getting likes will finally have to come to terms with the fact that a like means nothing if it doesn’t convert. With Read, Watched, Listening and down the line perhaps Purchased buttons, advertisers and marketers will have quantifiable and measurable conversion metrics.
So what’s the marketing story? Delivering compelling content and measuring conversions.
If the benchmark for Organic Search success is ROI, the process to achieve this goal begins with a sound link building strategy. When it comes to link building, it pays to be popular. Link popularity measures the quantity and quality of sites that link to your site. With link building, relevancy directly correlates to rankings. The more relevant incoming links your site receives, the greater the chances of your site ranking high on major search engines.
Incoming links are an extremely valuable part of link popularity and link building. Incoming links bring considerable amounts of traffic to your site. Linking to third party sites increase user visit potential. Their effectiveness is contingent on strategy. It is important to develop direct and indirect incoming link sources to establish search integrity and maximize relevance.
Direct Linking
Effective link building is a continuous process. Success does not come overnight. When it does, it’s generated from careful evaluation. Three important factors go into effective direct linking:
- Quantity – Total incoming links directed to a site or webpage
- Relevancy – Degree to which the incoming links relate to your site
- Strength – The amount of authority the site providing the link has
Adhering to these factors will positively impact your organic search position. Proper research is key. You are likely to find sound linking partners within your network. Sites with high ranking relevant search terms, keywords and themes will benefit your link building strategy. Don’t forget your manners. Create personalized direct link requests when seeking incoming link partnerships.
Indirect Linking
Indirect linking is a more natural approach to incoming link acquisition. It relies on content to draw sites to your site. But as is the case with direct linking, indirect linking best practices should be implemented for link building and Organic Search success.
- Make Your Site Linkworthy – Add educational and instructional content; include case studies, blogs, press releases and white papers
- Submit to Directories – DMOZ, specialized directories. It’s about relevancy.
- Market Your Memberships – Promote industry affiliations, contacts and connections
- Freshen Your Content – Increase your site’s visibility and attractiveness
Formulating a strategic link building plan requires expertise. A novice approach can raise warning flags across search space adversely affecting your rankings and reputation. Remember – link popularity measures quantity and quality. Therefore, it makes sense to avoid link popularity farms, linking to your own site, linking to sites that house hundreds of links on a single page, unknown link solicitations and bulk list submissions. And as always, think before you link.
Everyone talks about Facebook, Twitter and to some extent Foursquare when addressing the power of social media. Sometimes – IPO news notwithstanding – it seems like LinkedIn is the forgotten stepchild. People know it’s there but they don’t know what to do with it. Companies may have a hard time viewing LinkedIn as anything more than an online resume repository. But like any other social network, LinkedIn offers opportunities to increase brand awareness and user reach in search space. When properly leveraged, LinkedIn can help you tap into your career-minded audience and build your professional network – connections that could drive client relationships.
Many companies place LinkedIn solely in the hands of human resources. LinkedIn is a great recruiting tool but it is also a great way to improve your page one rankings on Google, Bing and Yahoo; therefore, it should be part of any Search and Social optimization campaign. Incorporating relevant keywords into your LinkedIn profile and joining or creating LinkedIn Groups can build up your search authority on the major search engines. Also, utilizing the LinkedIn RSS feed is a great way to drive traffic to your corporate blog. According to HubSpot, small businesses that actively blog get, on average, 97% more inbound links, 434% more indexed pages and 55% more site visits. That is some serious SEO mojo you could be giving your LinkedIn page.
Unfortunately for LinkedIn, it is lacking the cool factor inherent in Facebook and Twitter. People don’t like – Facebook pun not intended – updating is as often. But content additions and revisions help improve search rankings, which makes incorporating them into LinkedIn important to your overall search strategy.
In its Interactive Marketing Forecast Report, Forrester Research portends that search, display advertising, mobile, email marketing and social media will drive a 35% increase in ad spending by 2016. That’s certainly good news worth believing in, especially coming from such a respected source. The report is full of interesting statistics and industry forecasts but one prediction is particularly eye-catching; the growth of interactive marketing will essentially sign the death warrant of the daily deal. Again, it’s tough to argue with Forrester but this may be a tad rash.
Daily deals have become an important results-driver within the affiliate marketing channel, which is conspicuously absent in the Forrester growth model. This is strange considering Forrester predicted US affiliate marketing spend would hit the $4 billion mark by 2014. Also, other performance channels like email marketing and social media have spearheaded the success of daily deals through advanced geo-targeting and effective consumer engagement. Perhaps Forrester is equating the recent trials and tribulations of Groupon with the whole of daily deals. Groupon is the big fish but it isn’t the only fish. Nowhere was that more evident than at last week’s DailyDealMedia Conference where some of the heaviest brand hitters sung the praises of the daily deal.
Daily deals detractors often point to the savvy consumer as the eventual downfall of the industry. Can a company really grow with a fly by night customer only interested in a 90% coupon? No, not if the sole ROI metric is profitability. Many companies leverage daily deals for engagement or branding similar to the non-revenue ROI goals of many social media campaigns. And yet it’s doubtful any research firm will be signaling the end of social anytime soon. Given their positive impact on the affiliate marketplace, daily deals deserve a place at the interactive marketing table. Maybe the industry needs to offer Forrester a kick arse coupon.
Advertisers and marketers need to keep singing it. Why? Because online users continue to view display advertising campaigns as intrusive and essentially tone deaf to relevancy. According to research conducted by AdKeeper and 24/7 Real Media, 58% of users don’t click on display ads because they’re deemed irrelevant to their needs. Performance channels, display advertising included, are meant to drive efficient growth. But such compiled data makes that a tough sell. So what’s the solution? How about some common sense targeting!
Folks aren’t interesting in anything that makes life harder. Life is hard enough. When users are online searching for products and services, they want to get in and out fast. They don’t want ads of dance-challenged men sporting beer guts promoting muscle building products to impede their search for an apartment. When checking on travel delays, they don’t want to have to squint to find the X to close out an ad for a breakthrough diet supplement. These are just a few examples of banner ads gone terribly awry. They leave a bad taste in the mouths of users and do great harm to the industry as a whole.
The good news that can be inferred from that AdKeeper and 24/7 Real Media statistic is that 42% of users are clicking on display ads or can be persuaded to click. Proper targeting and user-friendly advertising are giving them a reason.
