Social Media for Business
Kevin Gibbons
Director of Search, SEOptimise

What is social media?
 Online marketing strategy
 Web 2.0 - User generated content
 Integration with offline marketing
 Compliments SEO as link building tactic
 Can be combined with online promotion activities

What types of social media are there?
 Social networking
 Social news/bookmarking
 Photo sharing
 Video & podcasting
 Blogs and forums
 Micro-blogging
 Wikis

Social Networking - Facebook

How to promote using Facebook
 Connect with a relevant audience
 Post a link
 Create a fan page or group
 Invite people to an event
 Create an application

Social Networking - LinkedIn

How to promote using LinkedIn
 Connect with friends, colleagues & clients
 Network with industry contacts
 Complete your profile fully
 Answer questions
 Create a company profile
 Advertise for jobs

Social Bookmarking - StumbleUpon

How to promote using StumbleUpon
 Make friends with like-minded people
 Vote (thumbs up) for stories you like
 Review your favourite stories
 Submit content
 Ask for votes
 Help similar users with votes

Photo Sharing - Flickr

How to promote using Flickr
 Upload good photography & interesting pictures
 Connect with similar users
 Join relevant groups
 Submit photos to groups
 Allow your content to be used online
 Interact by leaving comments
 Link to website from popular images

Video - YouTube

How to promote using YouTube
 Create interesting content!
 Select relevant category
 Optimise with relevant text to improve YouTube search
rankings
 Use tags for local keywords
 Allow embedding of videos
 Target niche video sites, not just YouTube

Blogging - SEOptimise

How to promote using blogs
 Write frequently updated content of a specific theme
 News hook – interesting, comical or bizarre stories
 Encourage RSS/email subscription
 Link to and connect with relevant bloggers
 Use a recognised blog CMS such as WordPress
 Optimise for search engines
 Submit for Google News inclusion

Microblogging - Twitter

How to promote using Twitter
 Find users with similar interests
 Find local users
 Promote your profile online
 Communicate with followers
 Frequency of updates
 Manage customer support & feedback

Wikis - Wikipedia

How to promote using Wikipedia
 Add a link to an existing relevant Wikipedia page
 Create your own Wikipedia page

How are brands using social media?
Examples of successful SMM Campaigns:
 Where the Hell is Matt?
 Compare the Meerkat

Where the hell is Matt?

Results – wherethehellismatt.com
 Sponsored by Stride Gum as viral marketing campaign to
travel the world and record two more videos
 Over 30 million video views on YouTube
 Hit Digg homepage 4 times, 1 story with 8,234 votes
 StumbleUpon – 417 favs & 122 reviews
 84,735 inbound links reported in Yahoo!
 Media coverage from BBC, Guardian, Times Online etc…
 Now ranks #1 in Google UK & Global for “Matt”

Results – wherethehellismatt.com
 Huge online traffic buzz:

Compare The Meerkat

Results – comparethemeerkat.com
 YouTube – 150,000 video views

Results – comparethemeerkat.com
 234,206 fans on Facebook

Results – comparethemeerkat.com
 6,318 Twitter followers:

Results – comparethemeerkat.com
 Traffic: comparethemarket.com vs comparethemeerkat.com

Results – comparethemeerkat.com
 Inbound links: 5,713 (Yahoo! Site Explorer)
 3,012 blog mentions (Google Blog Search)
 Visits to Comparethemarket.com increased by 86%

How can you measure social media?
 Traffic
 Conversions
 Brand awareness & online reputation
 Customer support & communication
 Feedback & reviews
 Media attention
 Link bait

How can you use social media?
1) Define main objectives
2) Highlight your online audience
3) Brainstorm ideas, be creative
4) Connect with social media influencers
5) Push to multiple social media channels
6) Use online PR to promote to journalists & bloggers

Questions?
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our blog: www.seoptimise.com/blog