New Certainty
There’s a new certainty to join death and taxes: social media marketing will continue to evolve at breakneck speed.
With a spate of recent changes and announcements from four of the biggest players in the social channel, brands have even more options for connecting with their stakeholders. Here is a quick summary of a few new things for every marketer to explore further:
Google+
Now that Google+ is available to businesses, brands are either rushing in to claim their space or holding back, wondering, ”Do we need another social profile? What makes this different or worthwhile?”
From an SEO perspective, with all three major search engines factoring social signals as key factors in their algorithms, it only makes sense to feed Google social signals coming from within its own backyard. But while other social properties provide ways to feed content from your other properties to theirs (e.g., news feeds from Twitter to Facebook, from Facebook to LinkedIn, etc.) Google+ is demanding unique content from businesses, or, at least, content that hasn’t been fed from somewhere else.
The need for unique, relevant, shareable content is going to increase throughout the web-o-sphere and Google+, as part of Google, is putting the pressure on marketers to keep it real with content that isn’t repeated ad nausea at every turn.
This is another spin on what the Panda, a.k.a. Farmer update set out to do- reinforce that Google wants to connect its users with the best resources, the best content, the best social conversations. The other search engines have said they are valuing great content too. Make it smart and relevant, and people will share it. When they share it, the search engines will notice. When they notice, your website will be rewarded with increased rankings.
At its December 8, 2011 press conference, Twitter announced that it is going to make it easier for brands to manage their profiles and organize the information they feel is most important to users. For a great rundown of what Twitter announced, check out this post from Greg Sterling writing for Search Engine Land.
Key ingredients in the new Twitter are that brands will be able to leverage more media easier in their profiles (Enhanced Profile Pages), faster searching for brands, and people using @, and less reliance on hashtags for searching brands (DBE’s @PamAbbazia told me she noticed this two months ago!).
Also, options for advertising your brand on Twitter are expanding. Promoted Tweets allow your tweets to be shown to people searching for specific topics or to be served to your followers or people who are similar to your followers. In addition, they can be served geographically. Pricing is CPE (cost per engagement). This is still in beta, available to select advertisers.
Promoted Trends is in beta and available to select advertisers. Get on the list for when availability goes wide. What is it? It allows advertisers to connect their messaging to trending topics.
Promoted Accounts is the twit-legit way to increase followers quickly. Messaging is served in search results and who-to-follow suggestions. These ads can be geo-targeted at the country level and at the DMA level within the U.S.
Facebook continues to move at breakneck speed in improving the options for business to promote their products or services to their audiences while increasing meaningful engagement with them. Powerful apps like those from NorthSocial and others make it easy for non-technical types to run contests and promotions. E-commerce tools enable real transactions right on Facebook, no need to risk losing the connection with the buyer linking them to your website.
Pros and Cons of Google+, Twitter, and Facebook for Brands
For a really great pros and cons review of these three services and their pages for businesses check out this article by Angela West for PCWorld.com.
Last But Not Least: LinkedIn for Your Business
While the changes haven’t been as fast-paced and dramatic as they have been on other social sites, it’s important to note in case you missed it that LinkedIn has been busy too. Now companies can be followed, add their products and services listings to their LinkedIn profile, request and post recommendations, and share updates that appear in the news feeds of people following your company. Here’s an example of how this looks for one of our B2B clients (click on image to enlarge):
So with the change of social media being a certainty, make it a point to stay abreast of this dynamic channel as the best marketers will be those who use this change to their advantage.
Happy New Year one and all!
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Niki Fielding
Veronica ”Niki” Fielding is the CEO of Digital Brand Expressions, a leading ”findability” marketing consultancy and service firm and editor of Jump Start Social Media for Your Career. She can be found on Twitter as @VFielding and is looking forward to your comments. |
