The presentation that I gave at the Click.It Search Marketing online summit. You can check out the webinar of this presentation for free at: www.clickitsummit.com/searchmarketing/ http://www.danecobain.com

1. Regatta House 67-71 High
Street Marlow,
Buckinghamshire
SL7 1AB England
+44 (0) 1628 498500
info@fstthegroup.com
The Role of Social Media in Search
Engine Marketing

2. Introduction
The Role of Social Media in Search Engine Marketing
Contents:
- The correlation between social and search
- Social media for backlink generation
- Crowd-sourced content
- Website stickiness
- Social ads

3. Introduction
Your host
Hi, I’m Dane Cobain!
- Social media marketing specialist of four years
- Strategist/Copywriter
- Industry speaker/commentator
- @DaneCobain
- dane@fstthegroup.com

6. THE CORRELATION
BETWEEN SOCIAL
AND SEARCH

7. The Correlation Between Social and Search
Search and social are more intertwined than ever
• Google+
• Twitter firehose supplying data to Google
• Search query volume increases
• Site engagement
• High visibility of social sites in SERPs
• Crossover potential (i.e. blogs, forums)

8. The Correlation Between Social and Search
Positive correlation
• Some social media activity does not directly affect
rankings
• But there’s often a correlation between the two
• Last year, SearchMetrics examined 300,000 URLs
• Specific elements were measured on each page
• These were combined with the rankings of those
pages in search
• This allowed them to determine the factors that the
high ranking pages most often had in common

10. The Correlation Between Social and Search
But why?
Even though social activity doesn’t factor in to the algorithm, it helps in other
ways:
- Increases reach
- Introduces influencers to the brand
- Increased search volume
- Encourages user trust (improving website ‘stickiness’)
- Social activity itself can be indexed

11. The Correlation Between Social and Search
Examples:
Example #1: Viral Video
- Originally created for social
- Content is shared by the brand’s followers
Example #2: Influencers
- A customer posts a complaint on Facebook
- The brand responds to the complaint and corrects it
- The customer, who has a successful blog, goes from negative to positive

12. SOCIAL MEDIA FOR
BACKLINK
GENERATION

13. Social Media for Backlink Generation
Passive backlink generation
By simply being active on social, you increase your
odds of receiving backlinks
Include relevant hashtags on Twitter and Google+ to
reach a wider audience
Also drives traffic in its own right
It’s likely that you’re already doing this

14. Social Media for Backlink Generation
Active backlink generation: Influencer outreach
Proactively search out influential (2,000+ followers)
social media users
Could be either individuals or brands
Find people who are posting similar content and
approach them
TOOLS:
- Twitter advanced search
- SocialMention
- Wefollow
- Twitter lists

15. Social Media for Backlink Generation
Case Study: O2 Emergency Services Network

16. Social Media for Backlink Generation
Active backlink generation: URL monitoring
Use inbuilt social search tools to find people linking to
your URL
Twitter dashboards are particularly powerful here
Find people who are linking to your content and
request a link from their website
Particularly useful for high-value content
I.E. If someone links to one of your infographics, give
them permission to use it on their site if they link back
to you

17. Social Media for Backlink Generation
Active backlink generation: #JournoRequests
Key hashtags to monitor on Twitter:
#JournoRequest: Used by UK journalists looking for case studies/sources
#PRRequest: Used by PR professionals looking to place their stories
#BloggerRequest: Used by bloggers to request products for review
Extremely useful for generating high quality links
Also raises your overall profile
However, it can be time consuming

18. Social Media for Backlink Generation
Active backlink generation: #JournoRequests
Examples: Some of the organisations that have either linked to me or featured me as a
source off the back of social media conversations.

19. Social Media for Backlink Generation
Active backlink generation: Partnerships
Let’s talk about YouTub’s ‘collab’ phenomenon
Can be used by brands with great success
Example: Canon LEGRIA mini launch
• New camera launched with four YouTubers
• Canon provided the reach with advertising
• YouTubers provided engagement (comments, likes, etc)
• Both the YouTubers and the brand grew throughout the campaign

20. Social Media for Backlink Generation
Active backlink generation: Partnerships
Partnerships don’t just apply to YouTube, although it’s the perfect network for them
Approach other content creators (both brands and individuals) via social
Choose similarly-sized brands in a related but separate industry
Example: A cheese manufacturer partnering with a cracker brand on cheese reviews
Or: A car manufacturer partnering with a record label to create driving playlists
Link to each other through combined marketing activity
Co-create content, or create content for each other’s site

21. CROWDSOURCED
CONTENT

22. Crowd-Sourced Content
What is crowd-sourced content?

23. Crowd-Sourced Content
Why crowdsource?
• Your followers provide the content for you
• Provides social media engagement and blog fodder simultaneously
• Uses natural language – important for searches
• Improves reach – participants are more likely to share
• Can improve website stickiness
• Two minds are better than one, but dozens are even better
• It’s easy!

24. Crowd-Sourced Content
Crowdsourcing ideas
• Gather your most frequently asked questions from social and write a blog post to
answer them
• Ask real people how they’re using your product/service
• Combine with competitions – i.e. a photography competition
• Embed other people’s tweets in a relevant article (even if they didn’t tweet you directly)
• Internal crowdsourcing – ask your employees
• Search for content that people are already posting

25. WEBSITE
STICKINESS

26. Website Stickiness
What is stickiness?
Simply put, does your website include functionality to
encourage people to ‘stick around’?
What’s to stop people from navigating away once
they’ve read your blog post or filled out your data
capture form?
Check your average visit duration on Google Analytics
Monitor stickiness over time
What pages do people spend the most time on? Why?

27. Website Stickiness
Common ‘stickiness’ features
• Gamification
• Comments
• Discussion forums
• Video content
• Games
• Interactive demos
• Social Connectivity

28. Website Stickiness
More on social connectivity
Apply common social networking elements to your own
website – if it works elsewhere, it could also work for
you:
• Profiles
• IM/Private Messaging
• Friend systems
• Social comments (i.e. Facebook/G+)
• Personalisation (think of Facebook’s pagerank)

29. Website Stickiness
More on social connectivity
Apply common social networking elements to your own website –
if it works elsewhere, it could also work for you:
• Ability to like/dislike
• Social login (makes it easier to sign up)
• Easy social sharing on other networks
• User/content recommendations based on social feeds
• Leaderboards (most-followed, most-liked, etc.)

30. SOCIAL ADS

31. Social Ads
Why bother?
Social advertisements can allow you to do things that search engine advertising
can’t:
• Sponsored social posts
• Remarketing via social sites
• Target imported e-mail lists
They can also help to:
• Reduce CPC
• Generate additional organic impressions
However:
• Consumers are typically in less of a purchasing mindset

32. Social Ads
Sponsored social posts
• Available on most major networks
(including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)
• A paid investment boosts organic
updates
• Can be combined with powerful
interest/demographic data
• Pro Tip: Use only on certain posts
• Top 90% of performers
• Including a call-to-action

33. Social Ads
Remarketing via social
• Some networks, Facebook included,
allow remarketing
• Show Facebook ads just to users
who’ve also visited your website
• Combine this with Facebook’s
conversion pixel to track users’ end-to-
end behaviour
• Highly effective when used in
conjunction with search engine
remarketing
• Most effective way to generate ROI

34. Social Ads
Target imported e-mail lists
• Facebook and certain other networks
also allow you to import a custom
audience
• If you have an e-mail list, you can
import that list and target all associated
Facebook accounts
• Run advertisements at this list that tie
in/run at the same time as your e-mail
marketing campaigns
• Or simply use this list to duplicate your
PPC campaigns within Facebook!

35. RECAP

36. Introduction
The Role of Social Media in Search Engine Marketing
We talked about:
- The correlation between social and search
- Social media for backlink generation
- Crowd-sourced content
- Website stickiness
- Social ads

37. Introduction
Your host
Please feel free to send me your follow-up
questions if they don’t get answered today.
- Social media marketing specialist of four years
- Strategist/Copywriter
- Industry speaker/commentator
- @DaneCobain
- dane@fstthegroup.com

39. fst ENGLAND
Regatta House
67-71 High Street
Marlow, Buckinghamshire
SL7 1AB England
+44 (0) 1628 498500
info@fstthegroup.com
fstthegroup.com
Questions?
fst SINGAPORE
21a Haji Lane
Singapore
189214
+65 6291 2088
info@fstthegroup.asia
fstthegroup.asia © 2015 fst marketing communications ltd

40. fst ENGLAND
Regatta House
67-71 High Street
Marlow, Buckinghamshire
SL7 1AB England
+44 (0) 1628 498500
info@fstthegroup.com
fstthegroup.com
thank you
fst SINGAPORE
21a Haji Lane
Singapore
189214
+65 6291 2088
info@fstthegroup.asia
fstthegroup.asia © 2015 fst marketing communications ltd