Social SEO Strategies: Mastering the Art of Social SEO

Social SEO Strategies:

Mastering the Art of Social SEO

a publication of

Share This >Mastering the Art of Social SEO © 2013, Catalyst Online LLC.

ForewordOver the past decade, social media has evolved considerably. From its emergence with Friendster and MySpace, to its massive explosion with Facebook, Twitter, and countless other networks, social media is now a part of everyday life for people all around the world today.

Not surprisingly, the search engines want to capitalize on the social signals produced when users participate in social networks. The challenge for today’s search engine marketer is to learn how to optimize for those signals, and to integrate them into a SEO program. This eBook is designed to provide search marketers with the framework needed to build and execute an efficient and effective social SEO campaign.

We hope you find this social SEO eBook of value — please let us know what you think. And be sure to share it with your personal and professional networks.

We would also like to thank our team of authors for their vast knowledge, innovative thinking, and unwavering dedication to this project. For more digital marketing insights from our authors, please visit the Catalyst blog.

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Andrea Caruso - Organic Search Manager

Andrea Caruso is an Organic Search Specialist for Catalyst. She has over eight years of marketing experience, and holds a master’s degree in Internet Marketing from Full Sail University. She has done organic search optimization for a variety of industries, including higher education

and CPG, but also enjoys blogging, online communities, and social media. She is originally from Orlando, Florida, but currently resides in Boston, with her husband, daughter, and cat.

Jason Corrigan - Organic Search Manager

Jason Corrigan is an Organic Search Manager for Catalyst. He works with Fortune 1000 companies, overseeing the planning and execution of custom SEO and social strategies for various brands. Jason got his start in SEO through sales, selling local directories and social

media packages throughout the Albany capital district. In addition, he has worked in content marketing and distribution with hundreds of businesses across the US and Canada.

Dan Cristo - Director of SEO Innovation

Dan Cristo is the Director of SEO Innovation for Catalyst. He is responsible for keeping a pulse on industry trends and ensuring Catalyst is prepared for the future. He is a New-Jersey-based industry veteran with over 10 years of experience leading SEO strategies for some of the world’s largest brands. A full-

fledged geek, Dan takes programming, chess, and table tennis very seriously.

Garth O’Brien - Organic Search Director

Garth O’Brien is an Organic Search Director for Catalyst. With a decade of experience, Garth manages all aspects of search engine optimization (SEO), social media, and online marketing and online marketing for various B2B and B2C clients. In addition, he has experience in paid

search, and extensive community management including engagement, recruitment, retention, and operations.

Clayburn Griffin - Organic Search Director

Clayburn Griffin is an Organic Search Director at Catalyst. He is an Internet marketing guy with an entrepreneurial mind who enjoys coming up with ways to use technology effectively for business. His background in the crossroads of social media and SEO has helped him to provide

comprehensive digital strategies to Catalyst’s clients. Previously he was a Social Marketing Director working on brands such as Sony Music and HarperCollins.

Matthew Proctor - Organic Search Manager

Matthew Proctor got his start in Internet marketing by opening a freelance copy-writing and SEO consulting practice in 2007. As an Organic Search Manager for Catalyst, he creates SEO strategies and provides content marketing, social media, link building, and

overall search marketing recommendations for Fortune 1000 brands. He is a member of the editorial team and regularly contributes to the blog.

Contributing Authors

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Table of Contents

Part I: Understanding Social SEO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Chapter 1: What Is Social SEO? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Chapter 2: How Social SEO Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Chapter 3: Why Social SEO Matters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Chapter 4: Preparing for Your Social SEO Campaign . . . 9

Part 2: Making Social SEO Happen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Chapter 5: Learn the Three Pillars of Social SEO . . . . . . 11

Chapter 6: Define Your Social SEO Strategy . . . . . . . . . . 17

Chapter 7: Select Your Social SEO Performance Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Chapter 8: Build Your Social SEO Team . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Chapter 9: Set-up Your Social SEO Campaign . . . . . . . 23

Part 3: Tactics and Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Chapter 10: Social Network Tactics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Chapter 11: Social Network Tools and Automation . . . 33

About Catalyst . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

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Introduction

In July of 2011, Google+ launched . Soon the social platform was hailed as the first legitimate threat to Face-book . More than a year later, Facebook is still going strong, and Google’s new social platform continues to develop . Today it boasts over 400MM users . And while its steady growth is impressive, Google+ is significant for an entirely different reason .

Google+ represents a key turning point for the search industry . The platform brought more personalization to web search than ever before . In doing so, it signaled a fundamental shift in how search engines present results — one where your search results are determined as much by the people you know, as by the sites that have the most links . In essence, Google+ created social search . Now all the major search engines strive for personaliza-tion and rely on social signals to improve their results .

But this book isn’t about Google+ . It’s about how the desire to provide better/more personalized search results — combined with the social dynamics of the web, and the avalanche of content generated online — have ushered in a new era in search: social search engine optimization (social SEO) . This book is intended to help marketers respond to this change by explaining how social SEO works, the implications it holds, and the tactics needed to capitalize on it .

Part I:

Understanding Social SEO

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Chapter 1:

What Is Social SEO?Social SEO is the application of social signals to the search engine results . But what does that mean? What, ex-actly, is a social signal? And how does it impact the search results?

Social signals are produced by individuals’ online activity . Each time you share some content, +1 an article, Like an image on Facebook, etc ., it creates a social signal . The search engines use these signals to help them determine the quality/depth of an online relationship between individuals .

But how do social signals actually impact the search results? Understanding the quality of an online relationship between individuals helps the search engines deliver better/more personalized results. Based upon their assessment of an online relationship, the search engines then determine if a particular piece of content would be more relevant to an individual. If so, they give it priority in the search results.

Let’s take a look at a simple example to illustrate:

Widgets R Us (WRU), sells widgets. The WRU website is a leading authority on widgets and is already ranking well. They have social profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Their connections on these social profiles (fans, Likes, circles, etc.) include other trusted companies dealing in widgets, industry experts on widgets, brand advocates, and widget fans.

The company grows, and in addition to their existing widgets, they release a brand new red widget. They post content about the new and improved red widgets on their website, and want it to rank well in the search results. So what do they do? They push links to social profiles to leverage their connections and expand the reach of their content.

Since WRU is selling widgets, and is already a leading authority, their push to social profiles builds a cascade of online commentary from other reputable folks connected to the widget industry. All that activity sends a signal to the search engines. It basically says to them, “Hey, you may want to check-out all this new widget-buzz, and consider indexing and ranking it in the search results, particularly for people who are logged into Google and are connected to these brands, experts, fans, and/or advocates via Google+, Facebook, or Twitter.”

That, in a nutshell, is a social signal. And social SEO is about

optimizing for those social signals.

Social Signal

WRU FACEBOOK

WRU TWITTER

Widgets R Us Website

WRU GOOGLE +

Widget experts. Widget fans & WRU advocates

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Chapter 2:

How Social SEO Works Trust matters . Think about how it affects your everyday life . It influences the decisions you make for everything from a serious health issue to choosing a movie . And the trust dynamic that exists between two people can be forged over decades or over coffee . But the degree of trust you have in an individual is often determined by the closeness of the relationship . In other words, intimacy is a strong indicator of trust .

Well, that is exactly the concept behind social SEO. In fact, it was discussed in Google’s “Social Search” patent submitted a year before Google+ was released. The patent reveals that search engines can use the relationship connections in a social network to better answer searchers’ queries, and that trust can be measured by intimacy.

This approach is very different from the earlier search model of using authority as a measure of trust. In a document-based world (such as the early days of the Internet when only web pages existed), trust was measured by how credible a document was. The credibility was measured by how many citations (links) a web page received. This is why link building is such an important aspect of SEO. Web pages need links to improve their credibility or “trust” in the eyes of the search engines. This, in turn, improves their rankings.

But, as the patent states, in a social environment, you don’t measure trust by authority; instead, you measure it by intimacy. For example, if a family member recommends a good restaurant, you’re more likely to believe them than an anonymous reviewer online. That’s because you know your family member, and because of that relationship/closeness, you have trust.

Social search represents considerable opportunity for search engines because they want to deliver more personalized search results. But in order to do so, they need to understand who you know and how well you know them. Tapping into your online social signals allows them to do just that.

A quick experiment from one of our team members helps to illustrate how search engines are trying to understand online social relationships, how search is changing, and how social SEO works:

Shortly after Google+ was released in 2011, I received an invitation from a friend to try out the site. I set-up dozens of circles, +1’d my favorite sites, and started a hangout (group video chat) with some friends. The site and features were interesting, but I failed to understand its impact… until I did a search.

I had a pharmaceutical client who makes a drug to treat stroke symptoms. To prepare for an upcoming presentation, I did a search for “stroke treatment” and took a screenshot of the search results.

An article on stroke treatment written by a doctor appeared at the bottom of the first page. I hovered over the small picture of the author’s face in the list, and noticed that I could add him to a Google+ circle. So, I created a new circle called “doctors” and +1’d the article he wrote.

Then I performed my search for “stroke treatment” again. This time, the doctor’s article was in the number one position in my search results!

So what happened? What caused the doctor’s listing to suddenly sky-rocket to the top of the search results?

Once the doctor was added to a circle, Google figured the individual knew him and trusted what he recommended. Based upon that assumption, they moved his web page to the top of the person’s search results. But the increase in the doctor’s ranking wasn’t solely due to him being added to a circle. His rise to the top spot was also due to the fact that:

*The doctor was highly relevant to the individual’s search; after all, the doctor is an expert in stroke treatments.

*The doctor is highly credible since he actually is a physician, and his site has many other sites linking to it.

As you can see from this experiment, social SEO leverages the trust that is passed along in online relationships via social signals.

At its core, social SEO is about influencing the influencers to engage with your content, and optimizing for social signals. As the “well connected” in social environments interact with your content online, they are, in a sense, recommending that content to their followers. And it is that recommendation that can improve rankings at scale.

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http://www.google.com/patents?id=F5fbAQAAEBAJ&zoom=4&dq=social%20search&pg=PA1%23v=onepage&q=social%2520search&f=false#v=onepage&q=social%2520search&f=false


Chapter 3:

Why Social SEO MattersSo now that you know what social SEO is, and how it works, you need to understand why it matters today .

Social SEO is important for marketers because search has evolved . Gone are the days where search results are determined solely by how many keywords are on a page, or how many links a site has . In fact, many SEO tactics that worked in the past will actually damage your search rankings today .

Instead, the social signal — people talking about your content on their social profiles — is becoming more and more relevant to search. In fact, even Matt Cutts, the webspam guru at Google, acknowledged that social signals are becoming important. Now search results are highly personalized to the searcher. They take into account many data points including who you are, where you are, who you know, what you like, and where you’ve been online. In other words, search truly has changed.

Embracing social SEO is key because this trend of highly personalized search results is growing exponentially as the amount of data we share about ourselves and others increases. For example, industry stats indicate that YouTube members upload 72 hours of video content every minute. In the same amount of time, Facebook members share 684,478 pieces of content. Then there is the content generated on the wildly popular sites like Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Tumblr, not to mention all the blog posts, emails, text messages, Word documents, photos, and billions of other pieces of content.

Now search engines analyze all this content to better understand searchers’ queries and the type of results they prefer. Their desire to provide more personalized search results — combined with the social dynamics of the web and the deluge of online content being shared — underscores the importance of adopting social SEO.

Clearly, social SEO is a game-changer as it can affect your visibility and rankings in the search engines. Smart marketers will adjust their strategies to accommodate the change to ensure their brands achieve maximum visibility.

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http://youtu.be/ofhwPC-5Ub4

http://www.youtube.com/t/press_statistics

http://www.youtube.com/t/press_statistics


Chapter 4:

Preparing for Your Social SEO CampaignNow that you know what social SEO is, how it works, and why it’s important, the next logical question is, “How do you prepare to optimize for it?”

The answer is to take what we know of traditional SEO, and apply those principles to the social graph. Think of it this way: if building authority was done by improving the quality and quantity of inbound links, then building intimacy is done by improving the quality and quantity of social connections.

But how do you judge the quality of an online social connection? You do it the same way as you do in real life. You measure it by how well you know someone, how deeply you’ve interacted with them, and how much their interests align with yours.

For example, if you meet someone in person for the first time, you may know their name, and you may be able to tell whether you like to be around them or not, but you wouldn’t say that you trust them yet. And chances are that you would probably rate the quality of that social connection as pretty low. In the same way, you might know the name of a company or brand, and you might Like it on Facebook or +1 them on Google+, but that doesn’t mean you necessarily trust them, or that you would rate that social connection as high quality.

In real life, a deep/quality relationship usually involves two people spending time together. They hang out, chat, call each other, ask for one another’s opinions, and share experiences, etc. Today, all of those things can be done online. When that happens, they produce the types of social signals that search engines look for when assessing how deep a relationship goes online.

To optimize for social SEO, you should start to engage with your online connections on a deeper level. Doing so will send important social signals to the search engines that will translate into earned trust, and help your content rank better in the search results.

In addition to improving the quality of your online relationships, you should also strive to gain an understanding of how each social interaction affects rankings. Ideally, you want to be able to answer the following questions:

*What platforms and networks are most important?

*How much of an impact will a single tweet, Like, or share have on the rankings?

*How do we get influential individuals to share our content?

*How do we measure the impact?

Your ability to address these types of questions is key to developing a solid foundation for your social SEO program over the next few years. Ultimately, your answers will help you create a strategy that will determine whether future algorithm changes will help or hurt your rankings.

[email protected] 617-663-4100

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Part 2:

Making Social SEO Happen

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Chapter 5:

Learn the Three Pillars of Social SEONow that you understand the basics of social SEO, it’s time to put the pieces together to make it happen . The first step is creating a solid foundation . That begins with changing your mindset about how you view social media, social networking, and content creation . Many people tend to think of these core elements in silos, but that’s a mistake . To fully realize the potential of social SEO, it’s helpful to view these pieces as one ecosystem . Why?

We are all living organisms interacting together in the digital, non-living world of social networks. Our valuable thoughts and opinions are shared via tweets, Likes, and +1s. Those social actions become content that provides the networks with the social media it needs to fuel their growth. In turn, social media feeds the individuals on the networks, and drives more social activity.

But you also need to include the role of search in your social SEO foundation. Search engines now look to pull content from websites that have active social profiles that encourage and sustain participation and communication with online users. They use social activity such as consumer dialogue, social shares, and views as a form of credibility. It helps search engines determine which sites have the best content to serve to an online user. Given that, you need to consider how those outside your social ecosystem can find your presence through search.

From Facebook to Twitter, from YouTube to Google+, one thing is clear: if you want to get your brand in front of your target audience online — and beat out the competition — you need to set-up a great social media optimization campaign. But how do you make it happen? How do you set-up a social media presence that not only ranks well on search engines, but also entices your audience to interact with your brand and continue the conversation with their friends and followers?

To get the job done, you need the three pillars of social SEO: on-site optimization, social profile optimization, and social network optimization. Below we’ll explore each:

On-site Optimization The first pillar in social SEO is on-site optimization. This is about optimizing your website in order to create the most exposure for your social presence in the search engines. Below are some on-site optimization best practices you should employ:

Connect Your Website to Your Social Assets

It is crucial that your social media optimization strategy connect your website to your social assets, and link your social assets to your website. The best way to connect these properties is by adding official social networking icons to your site. Just about every social platform has an official button/icon that directs online users to the corresponding pages. Make sure that each social property you participate in is represented on your website with the appropriate button. For best results, place each button on every platform that you have, from your main website to the company blog. Try to include your social buttons on every landing page within your website. This will ensure that no matter where your audience is on your site, they will be able to go directly to your social channels.

Place Social Buttons “Above the Fold”

Place each button “above the fold,” preferably in the top right corner. That way, users and search crawlers can easily find them. Ideally, they should be located in the header of your site template so they appear in the same location, in the same size, and using the same images on every page. However, it is okay to display these icons in the page footer as a secondary means for your users to connect.

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Use the Official Social Buttons — Don’t Redesign Them

While you may be tempted to tweak the social icons to match the design aesthetics of your website, don’t. It can confuse people. Remember, your goal is to drive engage-ment, followers, fans, and connections. Don’t make it difficult for people to connect with you. The below image is a great example of these on-site optimization best practices in action. The social icons are located above the fold, and none of the icons have been manipulated or redesigned. Together, these two elements help a visitor to immediately find and recognize the social buttons so they can connect.

Ensure Social Buttons Open in a New Web Browser Window

Obviously, social icons need to link directly to their respective profile page URL. For example, the Twitter icon needs to link to your Twitter profile URL. However, it is highly recommended that you have a new browser window load when a user clicks on a social icon. Otherwise, you are essentially sending them away from your site, and they may not return.

Connect Your Blog to Your Google+ Profile

If you have a blog on your site, connect it to your Google+ profile so your profile image will show next to your content in the search results, as shown in the image below:

Include a Call to Action

Another way to maximize connections is by adding a simple call to action. Studies have shown that including an encouraging note — such as “Follow Us” — near your social profile icons increases their usage. This is also true for increasing how frequently your content is shared across social networks.

Add Share Buttons to Every Piece of Content

Whenever you create and publish new content, make sure that your audience has the ability to share it. Sounds basic right? But you wouldn’t believe how many businesses don’t realize that they can easily add social sharing buttons at the end of every piece of content they publish, whether it’s a video or an article, etc.

Don’t Overwhelm Visitors with Too Many Options!

Avoid using too many share buttons — there is no need to include one for every social network under the sun. Likewise, don’t use widgets like “ShareThis” that show and hide dozens of share buttons. Giving users too many options is a sure way to confuse and overwhelm them. Stick with the major social networks’ official share buttons.

Include the “Must Haves”

While every social platform might not be appropriate for your industry and audience, there are a few “must haves:” Google+, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Every business should participate in these social outlets due to their influence in driving search engine rankings and creating credible, natural links. Learn how you can add the buttons for these platforms to your digital environment by clicking the links below:

Use Message Boards to Create a Community

The social media optimization strategy for your company website should also strive to create an environment that is conducive for discussion and communication. Fortunately, message boards are an excellent platform for this type of dialogue. They allow like-minded individuals to come together and share their personal experiences. Ultimately, message boards become an online community for users to return to again and again. They will also signal to search crawlers that you are an authority within your industry, and boost your brand’s visibility in the search engines.

Beyond that, you can leverage message board for your content efforts. Because social conversations influence search behaviors, message boards contain relevant concepts that are emerging in search interest and popu-larity. Mine them for the important insights they contain, and then develop and optimize content that will be easily found in the search engines.

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http://www.google.com/+1/button/

http://twitter.com/about/resources/buttons

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/

http://www.youtube.com/t/creators_downloads


Case Study: What Not to Do

The image below was snapped from a public relations consulting firm website. Kudos to them for adding social networking buttons to their website so visitors can connect with them on their social properties.

However, they made three key mistakes in the process:

1. Their social networking icons were located in the bottom right corner, well below the fold. If their visitors don’t scroll down, they won’t even know about the opportunity to connect!

2. The colors of the official social networking icons were changed to match the design of their website. Unfortunately, it is the same shade of gray as their background color. This can make it confusing and difficult for visitors to connect.

3. When a visitor clicks on one of their social icons, they are taken to its respective profile page, and away from their site. As a result, they run the risk that a visitor may never return to their site. Instead, they should have had a new browser window open when a visitor clicks on one of their social icons.

Social Profile OptimizationThe second pillar of social SEO is social profile optimization. At this point you may be thinking that you’ve got this covered because your social profiles are already set-up. But optimization and set-up are very different. Think about your social properties as digital assets. If you want to get the most out of those assets, you need to optimize them for better performance.

So how do you optimize your social profiles? Below are a few best practices to get you started:

Research Your Audience

Research your target audience to learn about their personal search experience, and understand where they spend their time online. This will help you determine which social platforms to target instead of blindly dedicating time and resources to them. Remember, just because your teenage kids, the family dog, and even Grandma Agnes all have a Facebook profile, that doesn’t mean that your brand should have one too. But perhaps it should — your research will tell you where your audience is. For example, if your audience consists of 18- to 24-year-old males, your research should tell you to invest with YouTube before creating a Pinterest profile.

Be Consistent

Profile optimization will vary depending on the social network, but they all have common optimization areas such as those highlighted here. These core areas give you an opportunity to tell the network and search engines who you are and what interests you. Be sure that you provide consistent information across your various social profiles. This will help you build your overall topic authority by ensuring that you have a consistent identity on your website and other online properties.

Leverage Your Keywords

Keywords play an important role in optimizing your social profiles. Be sure your target terms align with your keyword strategy and incorporate them into the description and biography of each of your social profiles. These descriptions should sound completely natural, as if you were telling someone about your company face-to-face. Weaving-in target keywords that sound and appear naturally will signal to search crawlers that your online presence is dedicated to maximizing the user’s online experience, as opposed to trying to manipulate search engines by cramming in as many keywords as possible. This will ensure that your online presence is seen as a true authority. As a result, your visibility in the search results should improve.

Social Profile Optimization Areas

About: A small chunk of text on your profile where you can summarize who you are.

Headline: Your name, title, or company name.

Related Websites: A list of links to your other online properties or profiles.

Interests: A list of interests or things you like.

Profile Image: A main photo of yourself, or company representative.

Asset Gallery: A collection of photos or videos you have uploaded.

Share Content: Status updates, posts, and links that you’ve shared with your social connections.

Lists: Groupings of your friends or connections. On Twitter and Facebook they are called lists, on Google+ they are called circles.

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Earn the Right

Your profile optimization efforts can help you earn the right to answer searchers’ questions. For example, just because your company makes sneakers doesn’t mean you have the right for your content to show-up when someone makes a query. You must earn that right by showing search engines that the searcher trusts you, and that your content is the best possible answer for their question. The first step in building that expertise is by focusing your profile and its contents on a small set of keywords that you dominate as the single authority.

Share, Share, Share, Share, Share

Every news article that you publish on your blog, every video that you post on YouTube, every new image, landing page, and company announcement you make — all of it should be shared with your social networks. Actively updating your social media profiles will give your audience a reason to visit often, and inform the search engines of your new content. It will help your content get indexed quickly and efficiently, and in turn, increase your brand’s overall visibility online.

In addition, every time that you post new content on your social profiles, your followers and fans may share it on their own personal profiles, thereby amplifying your original message. As a result, they can really help you spread the word! For example, if you have 5,000 followers on Twitter, and they all have at least 100 followers themselves, think of the type of “word of mouth” advertising you can benefit from with just one tweet! Combine this with the fact that Google crawls and indexes postings from most social media platforms like Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+, and you are looking at a social media machine that continuously advances your online authority and visibility in the search engines.

Be a Good Friend

Creating an environment that encourages dialogue and peer review is simple if you follow this rule: Treat your audience the way you would treat your own friends. In other words, be a good friend. It’s really that simple. Think of how you would naturally make yourself available for your friends if they needed to speak with you at any time. You should strive to create that same level of availability with social media. To do so, add your social buttons to as many places as possible — your website, blog, publications, etc. This will allow your audience to reach you when they need to.

Be Engaging

Think about the type of topics you would talk about in a normal conversation with a close friend. Most people discuss things like the weather, sports, news items, work, and entertainment. These are the very same topics that will help you create a dialogue with your audience in your social efforts. Below are a few engagement ideas:

*Be controversial. For example, if you’re from the Boston, Massachusetts area, post something about the Red Sox and the Yankees, and watch how many people will jump on the opportunity to comment on that!

*Be selfless and provide value. List links that your audi-ence can benefit from, even if the information isn’t di-rectly related to your company. Offer tips and advice on difficult issues that your audience struggles with, but strive to present a fresh perspective.

*Be controversial. “Stir the pot” with a contrarian point of view on a business issue. Check the headlines or conference agendas for ideas — every industry has some hotly-debated topics to discuss!

*Be yourself. Show some personality, and give folks a chance to get to know you. This will foster trust and participation. Being all business all the time is boring. People don’t connect with businesses, they connect with other people!

*Be entertaining. Post fun and cool images, videos, and quizzes.

*Be timely. Watch the headlines for breaking news in your space. Follow industry news accounts on Twitter and blogs in your RSS reader. Use this information to engage with your audience.

*Be encouraging. Give a personal shout-out to individual fans every once in a while to show that you are interested in your audience. Make them feel special!

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Social Network OptimizationThe third pillar of social SEO is social network optimization. This is about engaging with your online communities so you can grow your followers, and get them to spread your branding efforts to their friends and followers! Below are several best practices that will help you do exactly that:

Strive for Quality vs. Quantity

Clearly, having robust social networks is key for your social SEO efforts. The bigger your network, the wider your brand’s reach. But there is more to capitalizing on social networks than merely amassing a huge following. In fact, much like link building, sometimes a few highly trusted, influential people can be a stronger social SEO signal than many low trust, low influence followers. To get the most benefit from your social networks for your social SEO efforts, you need to think quality over quantity. Your goal should be to grow a targeted and engaged following. When you develop your social networks in this way, it will help you spread your content, and in turn, further grow your following.

Deepen Your Connections

Don’t be deceived by thinking that a follower, Like or +1 is a relationship. Those actions are the equivalent of saying, “Yeah, I met them at a party and they seemed cool.” Create a deeper connection by having one-to-one conversations, video chats, tagging photos, playing games together, or commenting on shared content, etc. In doing so, you will begin to establish your credibility and authority in the eyes of the search engines. This will improve your ability to get in front of people the next time they perform a search. The more people you can engage with deeply in your social networks, the more they will see you in their search results.

Connect with Influencers

It is not necessary to be in the network of every single person online. You can instead be part of their extended network by connecting with influencers. If a searcher has a question, and no one in their immediate network has a good answer, the search engines will look to see if anyone in their extended network does. For example, if you move into a new neighborhood, chances are that you’ll need to ask around for some recommendations on places to visit, the best local establishments, and doctors, etc. If someone you trust recommends a doctor, you are more likely to go to that doctor because trust is passed from the person you asked to the doctor they recommended. Likewise, when someone recommends a good website or a good person to follow on a social network, your trust level in the recommendation is increased.

Be Human

Social networks are designed to connect people with other people, not companies. Considering that, it is critical that your brand’s presence on social networks be portrayed as human. This is important because humans are very good at building relationships with other humans. However, they are not good at building relationships with non-human objects like a billboard, label, or brand. To help your brand become more human in your social efforts, give it a face. Brands instinctually want to use their logo as their profile picture, but that won’t help the company appear human. People have faces, and if brands want to connect with people, they need to have a face as well.

Fortunately, there are a few ways to bring a face to your brand’s social profiles. If your company’s founder or CEO is well known, you can use their image. For example, Mashable uses a photo of their founder, Pete Cashmore, for their Twitter profile.

Alternatively, you can combine your logo with a human like Pandora does on Twitter.

Help Others

When you create a new article, video, infographic, or other form of content, make sure it is meaningful to its audience and provides value. Strive to create material that speaks directly to the audience, solves their problems, and/or answers questions associated with your industry and services. For example, if your business sells natural home cleaning products, you may want to develop some content that addresses a dilemma that many consumers struggle with today: they want to have a clean, sanitary home, but they also want to be “green” and not harm the environment. Your content could provide information on how your products not only get rid of every inch of dust and dirt that could possibly exist in a home, but also are 100% natural and earth-friendly.

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Be Active

Creating a social media environment that includes thousands of fans and followers takes time. However, actively engaging with them — and delivering value — can certainly accelerate your efforts. Whether you have a blog or are uploading videos on your YouTube channel, make sure your content efforts are both frequent as well as consistent.

Ideally, you want to publish content on a regular basis — if possible, one new article or form of content per business day. On a social level, you want to engage with your followers 4 to 8 times each business day, or about once every two hours.

Using Search to Engage

Your product or service most likely addresses a specific need for your customers. Use search to find people struggling with an issue that your offering can solve. For example, if your company sells eye makeup, you might want to search for people who are complaining about runny mascara from a competitor. Then you can send them a free sample of your “non-runny” mascara.

Join Groups, Chats, and Hangouts

Every social network has its groups. They can be formal groups like those offered on Facebook, or informal groups like Tweet Chats on Twitter, or Hangouts on Google+. Look around to see what is happening on each network and get involved. Ask and answer questions. Give away products and services. Share and re-share valuable, relevant information.

Share Like Your Social SEO Campaign Depended on It

People will only allow you to be a part of their network if you provide them with additional value. Constant self-promotion is of little value; however, sharing good content is of great value. Spend time discovering and sharing unique, valuable content online such as industry news, expert advice, proprietary research, thought provoking articles, and original content from your blog or website.

The amount of content you can share without annoying followers varies per network. On Twitter you can share content upwards of 15 or 20 times a day. On Facebook you’ll want to tone that number down to less than five times a day, but you can engage in other actives such as commenting, tagging, or Liking content as much as you want.

Case Study: A Great Social SEO Model

Samsung Mobile serves as a model for great social SEO strategies and implementation. The company consistently ranks as the world’s most socially engaged brand, with over 800,000 Google+ 1’s, 3.5 million Twitter followers, over 7 million views on their YouTube channel, and over 15 million Likes on Facebook!

Their key to social success is determined by their ability to reach out and speak to their audience in a way that applies to both the individual and the masses. From boasting new products and hosting creative videos that highlight their company, their products, and attract new customers, to posting topical questions that relate to the individual, Samsung has successfully created an environment where communication between their brand and their consumers is constantly revolving.

In addition, each one of their social profiles has various calls to action that lead consumers to their other social profiles to further engage with, as demonstrated with their YouTube profile.

Do Something TODAY

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Chapter 6:

Define Your Social SEO StrategyIn order to fully capitalize on social SEO, you need to create an effective strategy, complete with goals and objectives . But you might be thinking, “I already have an SEO strategy, do I really need a social SEO strategy too?” The answer is yes!

Using Twitter is not a strategy. Social SEO should be an integral part of your overall SEO strategy as it is about using social media to make your SEO more effective. And your social SEO strategy will guide your team’s use of social media. Given that, you need to develop a social SEO strategy and align it with your traditional SEO strategy.

This will help ensure that your time is spent working toward appropriate goals, and that your efforts fit into the broader plan. Without it, your team will be unfocused, time and resources will be wasted, and reporting will be impossible. Be sure to take the time to set-up a social SEO strategy before getting started.

Setting GoalsThe first thing you need to do to develop an effective social SEO strategy is to establish your goals. It is critical to do this early-on as your goals will inform your strategy. But what types of goals can social SEO actually help you achieve? Your list will most likely include goals like increas-ing organic traffic, and using social signals to boost your rankings and influence personalized search result. But social SEO has the power to help you achieve many other goals, including the following:

1. Dominate Search Results for Branded Terms: Social media profiles are generally great at ranking for your brand’s name. As a result, they’re a “must” for online reputation management initiatives as they can help you dominate the search results page. Instead of having your website listed as one of the ten results in a branded query, why not own four of the ten? Or six? Or even all ten?

2. Extend Brand Exposure: Many social sites like Quora and other forums rank for search queries, but it may be difficult to outrank them with your website. Instead, you can take your brand presence to those sites. Social SEO can help you find these opportunities.

3. Obtain Links: Links are still extremely important for traditional SEO. Considering that, adding a social component to your SEO efforts can greatly improve your link-building success.

4. Anything: Social media has brought a great deal of flexibility to the web. That translates into lots of new and interesting ways to solve whatever SEO problem you might be struggling with, such as the “blue car” example below:

How Social SEO Can Help You Solve Interesting ChallengesImagine that your brand needs to have images of blue cars show-up when you search for its mascot’s name (and his name isn’t “blue car”). Sure, you could put a ton of pictures on your brand’s website, and mark-up the alt tags with the mascot’s name, but Google is not going to serve 20 top image results from the same website. But social SEO can help you meet the challenge!

To start, you can tap into social media to easily distribute content on an infinite number of sites. All you need to do is set-up a few Tumblrs, maybe some Instagram accounts, a couple of Blogspots, and some Facebook pages. It’s a lot of work to do yourself, so get the community involved too. Run social media promotions that encourage users to share pictures of blue cars mentioning your mascot on all their social channels. In addition, do some link building to the content you and your fans are putting out there. Then sit back and watch the rankings shift!

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Identifying ObjectivesNow that you know what your goals are, it’s time to lay out your objectives for achieving them. Ask yourself, “How am I going to reach my goals?” Let’s take a look at the many tactics you can employ to do exactly that:

Increase Social Connections

More connections equals more reach. That means your actions will affect the personalized search results of more people. It also means you can get your link-bait in front of more potential linkers. You can increase your network size naturally overtime by engaging in a useful and interesting way. However, you may also gain followers or Likes through focused promotions. Social media contests are a great way to grab a lot of new connections. Advertising can also increase your network size.

Improve Follower Quality

Maybe you have a lot of connections already, or maybe getting a million Likes isn’t a possibility in your particular field. In either case, you may want to pursue quality over quantity. This would require a social SEO strategy that targets key influencers. Such folks have a wide reach themselves, or they can get your content distributed, or they are likely to link to you. Be sure to target your promo-tion efforts at the right people. Do so by designing contests that will engage the appropriate demographic, or use advanced ad targeting.

Create and Optimize Social Profiles

These are the hubs of your social SEO. Note that if you ex-pect to lock down several results for branded queries, you will need some well-optimized social profiles. Make sure you have the appropriate vanity URLs where available, and use the right keywords in your profile name. In addi-tion, be sure to fill out your bio or additional information with meaningful and SEO-minded content.

Be Where the Answers Are

If you can’t get your website to rank for the terms you want, sometimes you can put your brand (and a link back to your site) on the pages that do rank. Find out what these pages are and engage with them. If a forum thread is holding strong for a keyword that you want to rank for, then consider posting your information there. Outranked by a Quora question? Answer it with your message.

Participate

Set specific engagement frequency objectives to ensure that you’re participating actively and regularly. Answer a question every week on Quora. Tweet an old link-bait piece once a month. Each day send a thoughtful question or response to a key influencer who isn’t following you yet.

Beyond Objectives In addition to identifying the objectives for your social SEO efforts, it is also important to include a quantitative goal for the objective where applicable. For example, if one of your objectives is to increase your followers, perhaps you may want to specify doing so at a rate of an additional 200 followers per quarter?

But establishing numbers for your objectives can be chal-lenging. Fortunately, a little market research can help you determine appropriate targets. Checking out your com-petitors is always a good place to start. How many follow-ers do they have? What’s the average number of Likes their blog posts get? Use their numbers to get a feel for the norm in your industry, and aim to beat them.

Tools such as the Facebook ad creator tool can also help your market research efforts so you can better specify your objectives. For instance, by creating an ad and setting-up your targeting options, you could use this tool to see that there are about 1,105,000 men over the age of 40 in the United States who Like cars on Facebook. So, if you are marketing blue cars to older American men, it might be unreasonable to think that you can get 500,000 Likes. And remember that Twitter’s network is smaller, so you’d probably be lucky to find 20,000 followers for your blue car Twitter page.

Overall, the best thing about social SEO is that it can provide a solution for every SEO problem. But to tap into its full potential, you first need to set your goals and identify your objectives. Then you’ll have a solid social SEO strategy that is ready for implementation and success.

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Chapter 7:

Select Your Social SEO Performance MetricsAfter you outline a strategy for your social SEO efforts, you need to make sure that it will get the job done . That means choosing your performance metrics and doing regular reporting .

Selecting KPIsAssessing the performance of your social SEO efforts be-gins with selecting the key performance indicators (KPIs) to report on. They should align with your social SEO goals. What are you trying to accomplish with your social SEO campaign? A good KPI should complement your goals.

For example, if you’re trying to increase organic traffic, then you’ll definitely want to include organic traffic num-bers as a KPI. In the same way, if online reputation man-agement is a goal, then perhaps the number of owned listings on the first search results page for branded queries should be a KPI.

Since social SEO goals can be diverse, there is no standard set of KPIs that you have to use. However, there are common ones you should consider:

Organic Traffic

Social signals should have an impact on your organic search rankings. Links shared through social networks tend to get indexed by search engines quicker, and each share is a quality signal of its own, improving the authority of the page.

Keyword Traffic (not provided)

Aside from overall organic growth, you’ll want to keep an eye on the (not provided) referring keyword. This is where Google dumps keyword traffic that it won’t reveal to you because the user was signed-in at the time. The fact they were signed-in means personalized results were possible. That’s why this number is important to watch. If you’re doing social SEO right, you should see a noticeable boost in (not provided) traffic. Keep in mind that other factors, such as growth of Google+ will impact your (not provided) traffic. To account for that, factor in the natural growth trend of (not provided) before your social SEO campaign got started.

Organic Search Rankings

You’ll want to monitor your search rankings for your chosen keywords. If you’re using them in your social SEO campaign, sharing links in keyword-rich context, then you could very well see an increase in rankings thanks to your efforts. Or maybe you’re using social profiles to lock-up the results page for your brand term. Search rankings can be an important KPI for you.

Google +1 Metrics

You can monitor your +1’s inside Google Webmaster Tools. This gives you the overall +1’s for your site, the change in click-through due to a +1 annotation, and how many impressions are served with a +1 annotation. Google+ should be a large focus of your social SEO strategy, so these metrics will see movement and be a great indicator for your success.

Average Shares Per Post

Your on-site optimization and content strategy, which are part of your social SEO campaign, should improve the shares (tweets, Likes and +1’s) that your content is getting. Keep track of these numbers (by network) on each post, and pay attention to the average. If a post comes in lower than usual, perhaps the content could have been better. If you aren’t getting many shares, maybe the share but-tons are not installed properly or are located in a less-than optimal place.

Social Referrals

To make sure you’re hitting the right areas, it’s important to keep an eye on the referral traffic from social networks. You want to make sure that your content isn’t just shared, but that it is shared by influencers. Check this number in relation to your average shares per post. Also, you’ll want to tag either your on-site buttons or your brand’s social network posts. When you check reporting, you want to be able to differentiate someone who visited because they clicked the link you tweeted, from someone who visited because they clicked a link someone else tweeted thanks to your wonderful on-page optimization.

Find the KPIs that make sense for your goals, and don’t be afraid to adjust them if necessary. Social SEO is a flexible, almost artistic process. It can be a powerful supplement to a traditional SEO strategy, and should be worked into your SEO reporting in a useful way.

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Choosing the Right Tools for ReportingNow that you know your KPIs, you’ll want to have the proper tools for pulling together the necessary information. After all, this data will help you judge the success or failure of your efforts, and help you determine how to alter your strategy moving forward. Below are a few tips on reporting tools:

Google Analytics

Of course, Google Analytics is the best option for on-site traffic tracking. Combined with Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics can provide the bulk of your reporting data. But beyond using Google Analytics for your standard SEO performance metrics, you’ll also want to take advantage of its new social features under the “Traffic Sources” tab.

Under “Sources” you can view your social referral traffic easily by network. This lets you see where your efforts are paying off the most. You may also find new networks here that you weren’t aware of, but that are sharing your content.

The “Social Plugins” section is also very useful. Here you can see what social interactions your visitors are performing on your site.

Facebook Insights

Facebook Insights will also provide you with great information on your Facebook Page and the Like button activities on your website. By adding the fb:admins or fb:app_id meta tags to your homepage, you can gain access to important Facebook user behavior happening on your site.

Twitter

Twitter also has analytics available; however, this service is in beta and a part of their advertising program. You can verify your domain in a similar way as with Facebook Insights or Google Webmaster Tools. Then, Twitter will show you how many tweets your content is getting, the number of clicks, and even the individual tweets along with their engagement metrics.

Knowing your KPIs ahead of time and choosing the right tools for monitoring them will help you prove the success of your social SEO effort. This on-going reporting is also vital to making appropriate adjustments to your strategy in a timely fashion. The data you’ll be getting back should be insightful and actionable. Don’t neglect reporting, or your social SEO will become undefinable fluff instead of a strategy.

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Chapter 8:

Build Your Social SEO Team Make no mistake about it, the success of your social SEO campaign greatly depends on the team running it . For all practical purposes, your team is your campaign, and the difference between the results generated from an “okay team” and a “great team” can be enormous — potentially 100 times greater .

For example, it is not uncommon for highly talented SEO practitioners to achieve rank for nearly impossible keywords, and drive traffic and conversion at a level that the average SEO only dreams of . But note that the potential for the disparity between average and great talent is even more pronounced in social SEO . That’s why staffing considerations are critical to the initiative . Below are a few you should consider:

Team StructureWhile it may be tempting to assign your social SEO respon-sibilities to an existing SEO team, it wouldn’t be wise. Given that they are probably a tad busy already, you wouldn’t see much of a return from that set-up. Moreover, social SEO requires a different strategy and different tactics than a traditional SEO campaign. Ideally, you should have a dedicated team for your social SEO efforts.

The most basic team structure should consist of two roles: a manager and a specialist. The manager is responsible for setting goals, leading strategy, and reporting to the busi-ness. In general, they should have the equivalent of five years of SEO experience and be very comfortable in the social media space.

The specialist is responsible for tactical execution. This person should have the equivalent of two years of so-cial media experience, and be competent in three core areas: social network platforms, analytics, and relationship management. Note that the relationship management piece is key as this individual needs to actually participate in the community you are growing on each network. This is important because search engines are judging you based on how well your social profiles interact and engage with your community, not on how well you broadcast content to them.

Hiring the Right PeopleThe challenge with hiring folks for your social SEO team is that most traditional SEO practitioners are too technical to really thrive in the social space. At the same time, most social media aficionados are not technical enough to re-ally understand how search engines work. That means you either need to find the people who possess the right blend of both skills, or you need to create a team where each member’s skill set complements the other.

As you consider various candidates for your team, watch out for the individual who doesn’t practice what they preach. If they say they can optimize and grow your Google+ profile, yet their own Google+ profile is empty... run! In other words, it’s not enough for someone to know how to optimize a social profile or following. You need a person who has actually done it.

This is particularly important for social SEO because each platform has a special community and tactics that require a unique approach. For example, Twitter has an abun-dance of “bots,” or fake accounts that artificially inflate follower count and engagement, whereas Google+ has far fewer fake accounts due to Google’s less open API. You can’t use the same exact tactics that worked on Twitter to grow Google+ followers. You need to apply the principles in a different way for each platform.

But beyond looking for technical proficiency and tacti-cal experience, you should look for passion. Strive to hire people who are truly excited about the role. With social SEO, you are essentially paying someone to spend time on social networks. Many people would love a job that pays them to spend all day on Facebook! Be sure to use that “fun” aspect to attract the people who absolutely love social media. However, watch out for the casual players who use it as a utility but have no desire to be immersed in that world 24/7.

Ideally though, your target should be hardcore social media addicts. Keep in mind that while they are tough to find, they are easy to spot. These individuals love the com-petition of having more followers than their friends; they try to maximize their impact by using tools to automate and track; and they create content on a daily basis just because they love sharing their experiences.

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Assessing the TalentWhether you are making a direct hire or seeking an agency for your social SEO efforts, you’ll find that the individuals who study it the most will rise to the top. The key then is to gain an understanding of how fascinated they are with social media and SEO. Below are a few questions you can use to find out, along with some tips on what to look for in the answers:

Walk me through your journey using social networking. Talk about all the platforms you use, why/when you joined them, and what you like/dislike about them.

Look for an emotional response to the various networks for this question. When someone is fascinated with something, they tend to have strong, polarized feelings about it. For example, you either love or hate Facebook. If you’re indifferent about it, then you’re not fascinated enough to spend time learning about it. And if you’re not going to study something, then you’re not going to be very good at using it.

What do you think SEO and social media will look like in 3–5 years?

Technology, and especially the Internet, is changing rapidly. Five years ago nobody knew about Facebook; now we’re hiring people to optimize a brand’s presence on it. See if they mention anything about upcoming sites and social networks, especially in the mobile space. Sites like Instagram and Path are already going mainstream today, and no doubt search engines will look to these apps as a source for quality signals. Bonus points if a respondent talks about the convergence of mobile apps and offline social networks, or if they can theorize about how human wearable computers and augmented reality will change social networking as we know it. The crazier they sound, the more likely they are to be right. Keep in mind that if your social SEO team isn’t thinking about the next big shift, your campaigns will always be reactive instead of innovative.

How often do you write, share photos, or record videos?

Look for specific content-related skills in this answer. This is important because both search engines and social networks reward content creators, not content consumers. If your team isn’t able to create content, you’ll be standing still on the social SEO treadmill. Every member of your team should have some content creation strength, whether it’s writing, photography, or shooting video. If a potential candidate has none of these skills, you’re better off going with someone else.

SalariesThe talent you need for your social SEO efforts is highly-specialized — they need to understand both SEO and social media. Because of that, they are in great demand, and depending upon their experience, they can command six-figure salaries.

Onward Search, an SEO recruiting firm, developed an infographic that covers the average SEO salary ranges across the United States. While the data is from 2011, and is specifically for SEO, not social SEO, the breakdown should give you a general sense of how much it might cost to hire a team. Again, you’ll want to hire at least a manager and a specialist to manage your efforts.

Agency vs. In-house

Alternatively, you may want to hire an agency to handle your social SEO initiative. Doing so will certainly spare you the hassle of trying to secure such highly-specialized talent. Since an agency already has experienced talent onboard, they will usually have a more up-to-date knowledge base on training, best practices, and new tactics. The one potential downside of hiring an agency is that you have less control over who is on your team.

The agency fee for the social SEO services provided will vary by shop, but could actually cost less than hiring an internal team, especially once you consider all the costs associated with taking-on and maintaining that staff. In fact, according to the research above, salaries for SEO positions are higher for in-house roles than for agency positions.

At the end of the day, it really comes down to the level of talent and effort your team is willing to put into the campaign. If the best team resides within an agency, then that’s the team you should hire. If your organization can attract, manage, and retain superior talent at an acceptable cost, then an in-house team is your best move.

Remember, a talented social SEO has the potential to drive 100 times more traffic than a mediocre one. Spend the time, energy, and resources necessary to put together the best team upfront, and the rest of the campaign will fall into place much easier.

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http://www.onwardsearch.com/SEO-Salary/


Chapter 9:

Set-up Your Social SEO Campaign To create the most success for your social SEO effort, take the time to carefully set-up your campaign . When you do so, be sure to address key areas such as policies, access, planning, resources, and costs . Below are a few tips on each:

Create a Social Media PolicyProper planning is key for social SEO efforts, especially when you consider the potential reach of your initiative. For example, a poorly thought out tweet or Facebook status could easily cause an adverse reaction and damage your brand. To prevent something like this from happening, make sure your social media policies are up-to-date. This may include compliance training for individuals responsible for managing your social properties. If you do not yet have a social media policy in place, look into developing one immediately.

Secure AccessBeyond having a solid social media policy, you also need to secure access to your social accounts. Take a quick inventory of the social profiles your organization has created, and make a list of who has administrative privileges to manage them. At a minimum, your team should have access to your Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts. Note that if an agency controls your accounts, make sure you gain administrative access as quickly as possible in case you need to update passwords or restrict access in the future.

Create a Content PlanProper campaign set-up also requires you to develop a content creation plan. The first step in doing so is to identify who will create your content. Fortunately, you have a few options. You can source it internally, which means either hiring a writer, or spreading the content creation responsibility across your marketing team. Or you can hire a creative or social agency to create the content for you. Alternatively, you can use a variety of online vendors that specialize in content creation such as http://skyword.com.

Have Diverse ContentYour content plan should also outline the various topics you plan to cover, along with the different forms of content to be developed. If you’re not sure what type of content to create, consider the following approach as a general guide: 25% original content; 25% roundups (Top 10 lists); 25% refreshed content (older content that you rewrite with a new angle); and 25% guest contribution. Ideally, you should have a good mix of text, infographics, and videos. This will ensure that your content can spread on text based networks like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and on image networks like Pinterest, and on video networks like YouTube.

Identify Who Will Share Your ContentWhile your content should live on your website, it should also be shared across your social networks. Your set-up needs to identify who will share your content. While at least one person should be responsible for it, don’t overlook the potential to leverage employees in your content sharing efforts. This group is often overlooked for this purpose, yet these individuals are ideal because they care about your industry, have a vested interest in helping your company succeed, and are easily contacted. Try to have these folks share your content with their audience to help you get the viral ball rolling.

However, you have to be careful with tapping into employees for this purpose. Not all employees will be willing to share work-related content with their personal networks. That is why a clear social media sharing policy must be in place before your campaign starts. Some companies let all employees share content with their personal networks at will, while others set-up company profiles for employees. For example, John Clayton, a senior writer for ESPN, tweets under the handle @ClaytonESPN.

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Leverage Your Social Networks to Amplify Your MessageWhile it’s smart to get employees to share your content, doing so will only get you so far. The core sharing must be done by the people who like your content and want to share it with their audiences. These folks are your Twitter followers, Facebook fans, Google+ circles, and YouTube subscribers, etc.

Understand the CostsYour social SEO campaign set-up also needs to take costs into consideration as growing your followers will take time and money. In general, the costs to grow an audience, and optimize it for social SEO can be grouped in three categories: human resources, content costs, and tools & marketing. If an agency handles your social SEO, they will roll these costs into one statement of work. And while the service fees for an agency tend to be higher than the costs you might incur doing it yourself, they have experience and access to the proper tools and people to make a campaign a success, along with proven processes in place to improve efficiency. If you have an internal team managing your social SEO effort, be sure to budget these costs ahead of time. Below are a few tips on each category:

Human Resources

This will be your biggest cost. Hiring a social SEO team can be both difficult and expensive as these are highly-specialized, in-demand individuals. Agencies are competing for such top talent, and leave little of it in the market for in-house teams. You may need to consider finding savvy individuals who specialize in traditional SEO or social media, and who can spend time learning the in’s and out’s of each platform. If that is the path you choose, set aside part of your budget for heavy training, especially in the first few months, and on-going training, such as conferences and webinars.

Content Costs

Actual content creation will be your second largest cost. If you buy content from freelance writers, you will probably end-up spending a few hundred dollars on an article. Infographics can range from under $1,000 to $5,000. Videos can be done on a shoestring budget with a $500 DSLR camera and some lights for $200. But keep in mind that videos will need a little editing as well, so make sure someone has access to, and experience using, professional video editing software like Adobe Premier.

Tools & Marketing

Assessing the success of your social SEO also needs to be factored into your budget as a major cost for this initiative. It could include a basic social media management program like HootSuite for $10/month. Analytics tools for tracking follower progress such as http://socialstatistics.com and http://twittercounter.com can run up to $150/month. Advertising on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube can cost several thousand dollars a month, but are by far the most effective way to drive engagement with your social properties. Each platform provides paid advertisers with detailed analytics.

As you set-up your campaign, keep in mind that the content and marketing costs for social SEO can be reduced if they are performed by the team. Considering that, be sure to look for individuals with strong writing and marketing skills. In addition, a good campaign will maximize the strengths of the team. If a team member has a love for video, shift your content marketing efforts towards YouTube. If an individual loves Twitter, hold tweet chats to try and grow your audience. It’s better to have a really strong following on one network than to have weak followings on every network.

Overall, social SEO initiatives are similar to other marketing campaigns in that they require careful planning. Be sure to get your social SEO effort off to a good start by taking the time to properly set-up the campaign.

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http://socialstatistics.com/

http://twittercounter.com/


Part 3:

Tactics and Tools

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Chapter 10:

Social Network TacticsWith a total of over 2 .5 billion registered online users active on social platforms each month, social media rep-resents a phenomenal opportunity for your business to get in front of its target audience . But building out social profiles with social share buttons is not enough . The tactics in this section will help you maximize your social me-dia efforts to support your brand, boost your search engine rankings, and of course, help your business be more successful! Keep in mind though that this is only a sample list of tactics — there will always be new ideas to try, new features to utilize, and updates on old favorites .

Google+Google+ is not only Google’s answer to Facebook and Twitter, it’s an identification system and interest graph they plan on using as the core of their search algorithm over the next 10 years. The most visible layer of that is a social network that incorporates all the best features of other networks (photos, walls, news feeds, etc.) and adds-in a few innovative features as well like Hangouts, business pages, maps, and author profiles. Google+ has enabled Google to build a social component into their offerings so they can get at that sweet social data and use it to improve their core search product.

Arguably, Google+ is the number one social platform to use if you’re trying to leverage your social efforts to improve your search performance. The platform’s features have a direct line to Google’s search algorithm, so the work you do on your Google+ profile ends-up populating your circles’ personalized search results (thanks to Search Plus Your World). So the more active you are on the platform, the more brand awareness you build. Even though the platform has a reputation for being less populated than Facebook and Twitter, it won’t stay that way for long. Why?

Google strongly believes that highly personalized search is the best form of search, and that data gleaned from social media accounts will add an extra ingredient to make it all come together for the end user. Google+ will provide them with that data, so they’re doing everything in their power to make it work, from integrating it into their existing products like Google Places, Gmail, and YouTube, to incentivizing webmasters with special perks like author profiles in organic search.

Google has a great resource with basic tips for using Google+ for your business, and below are a few tactics you can start using today to put your Google+ profile to work for you in the organic search results:

Cultivate Your Circles and Share Relevant Content

The strength of Google+ is in the circles feature. The entire platform is built around the idea that you should be able to easily segment your friends, fans, and followers into specific groups based on their connection to you and their particular interests. As a marketer it is essential that you cultivate your list of circles in such a way that you only share the most pertinent and relevant information with them.

The problem with most social networking platforms is that every one of your followers gets lumped into one big group. Let’s say you’ve got a consumer base with a multitude of divergent and conflicting interests. On most platforms, you’re faced with dilemmas such as “Do I share this hilarious cat photo with all of my followers, and risk alienating my dog-loving fans for the sake of growing my cat-friendly fan base?” Well, with Google+ you don’t have that problem. Simply create one circle for all of those cat lovers, and a separate circle for the dog lovers. That way you can better align your content with each group’s interests, and you won’t run the risk of offending either one.

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https://plus.google.com/

http://www.google.com/insidesearch/features/plus/index.html

http://www.google.com/+/business/

http://www.google.com/+/business/


Take advantage of the circles feature as much as you can. Segment and hyper-target your circles so you are never sharing something with someone who could care less about it. Doing so will increase brand loyalty and the likelihood that your circles will share your content with their circles.

Action Item:Create at least five unique circles that match-up with the personas you are targeting. For instance, maybe your targets are soccer Moms, college freshmen, or middle-aged men who wear skinny jeans, etc. Then begin grouping your followers based on their interests. Share something relevant with each circle at least once a week.

Sharing Circles with Your Circles

An effective Google+ profile requires a lot of active listeners. You need people to put you in their circles so that they see your content when you publish it. One of the best ways to grow your circles is to use the “Share Circles” feature. This feature allows you to share one of the circles you’ve been cultivating with all of the people in your circles. You can use it to flatter the influencers in your market and develop relationships with them.

For instance, let’s say you run a website that sells shoes and shoe accessories. You probably have circles that include shoe designers such as Manuel “Manolo” Blahnik Rodríguez, Maud Frizon de Marco, and other popular shoe industry influencers

from Converse, Threadless, and Clarks. Well, if you’re trying to get a popular blogger to put you in his circles so that he’ll share your content with his followers, it’s a good idea to throw his name in a circle like the above when you share it with your followers. By grouping him together with popular industry figures, you’ll likely boost his ego, and he’ll more than likely share your circle with his circles, and let them know who put the group together in the first place.

If you do this on a regular basis, you will not only develop relationships with your target influencers, but you will also deliver value to your existing followers because they’ll appreciate learning more about what profiles are worth following for information relevant to their interests.

Action Item: Put together a new circle of target influencers once a month, and share that circle with them, and the circles you have with interests relevant to them.

Hanging Out with Your Market’s Influencers

Another great way to persuade your target influencers to put you in their circles and share you with their audience is to invite them to participate in video hang outs. Video hang outs are a huge advantage to using Google+. Basically, you can set-up public or private video chats with up to 10 people at a time. Each person can participate in the video chat, you can play it live to all of your circles, or you can record it and publish it to them later.

Just like with the Sharing Your Circles tactic, hang outs are a great way to flatter your target influencers and get them to share your content and recommend people circle your Google+ profile. Let’s go back to the shoe website example. If you wanted to convince an active blogger in the fashion world to start sharing your content, you could invite her to participate in a hang out with you and other popular fashion bloggers. If she says yes, and you record the discussion, you’ll be able to publish it to all of your circles, and she’ll share it with hers. You could hang out and conduct interviews with celebrity figures, talk about the latest trends in the industry, or publically get their input on your latest sneaker design.

Once again, this tactic allows you to “kill two birds with one stone.” First, the bloggers you’re targeting will want to join the hang out because it will give them added exposure. And second, not only will you get your target influencers to share your content, but you’ll also be creating useful, relevant, and entertaining content for all of your existing followers. Just make sure you discuss interesting and relevant topics in your hang outs with people who know what they’re talking about.

Need an example of a brand doing this? ESPN has been hosting Google+ hangouts with all of their broadcasters and players for a while now. Naturally, a ton of people tune-in to get insights into the latest sports news. If they invited one of the writers from the popular sports blog Grantland.com to participate, not only would it be a huge opportunity for the writer to grow his audience, but also ESPN would get their content shared all over Grantland’s pages and social platforms.

Action Item: Host a Google+ hang out at least once a month, and invite at least three target influencers to participate in the discussions. Share them live to all of your circles, and record them for later YouTube publication.

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http://www.grantland.com


FacebookIf Google+ is a ghost town, then Facebook is a burgeoning metropolis! It’s the most popular social network by far with over 1 billion members. And while your efforts on Facebook won’t be rewarded by the search engines like your efforts on Google+ will be (except maybe for Bing), the potential for engagement on the platform itself is enough to make any marketer weak in the knees. Consider this: in just 20 minutes on Facebook there are over 1,587,000 wall posts, 2,716,000 messages sent, 1,484,000 event invites, and 1,000,000 links shared!

If you’re just starting out with Facebook, check out this Best Practice Guide the Facebook team put together. However, if you want to get the ball rolling now that you’ve got your branded Facebook profile set-up and ready to go, here are a few tactics to help you get started:

Organize Exclusive Events in Real Life

Facebook gives you so much information about your friends and followers that it’s almost scary to think about. Lucky for us marketers, we don’t get scared, we get resourceful! All of that data can be collected and exploited for your brand’s benefit. One way to put that data to good use is to host an exclusive event just for your Facebook fans in a given area. You can use the Facebook platform to send out invites to the event. Be sure to invite influencers and fans alike, but keep it exclusive. If they’re not one of your Facebook fans, they’re not invited.

The great thing about this tactic is that you can use it to expand your reach into select cities or neighborhoods. Is your brand just starting to get recognized in Chicago? Well, celebrate that with a block party, but only invite Chicago-based Facebook fans. And be sure to ask them to tell their friends to become a fan of your brand on Facebook so they can get into the event too. If you throw an event worth talking about, you’ll grow your Facebook fan base and your customer base in that specific area. Throw enough events all over the country, and you can really start to grow your influence.

The exclusive events are also an incentive to non-fans to follow you on Facebook. If you can get them to follow you, and keep following you, you can feed them any messaging you like afterwards.

Fashion retailer Topshop used this tactic when they held a runway event exclusively for their Facebook fans. During the show, they asked all of the attendees to take pictures from their seats, and share them on their Facebook profiles. The attendees got to feel special by attending the exclusive fan event, and Topshop got more exposure for their fashion line through all of the user generated content shared.

Action Item: Host an event this quarter in an area where you’re seeing a rise in business. The event can be anything such as a swag party, an info session, or a grand opening. Whatever it is, make it exclusive to the Facebook fans in your target area, and send out invites through the Facebook platform.

Like Us and Get a Coupon

Another incentive tactic to acquire new Facebook followers is the “Subscribe and get an exclusive coupon offer!” There’s that word “exclusive” again. You need to give people a reason to friend you on Facebook. It may not seem like it, but it is actually a big commitment for someone to friend a brand and hand over their personal information. By friending you, they’re giving you access to their profile, and they’re agreeing to receive all of your sales and marketing materials. You need to make it worthwhile for your fans, and one of the best ways to do that is to cut them a break on the price of your goods and services. Quiznos, shown above, provides a great example of this tactic.

The only trouble with this tactic is that it’s hard to keep the coupon code exclusive. You should expect it to leak out to sites like RetailMeNot.com, but that will only cut down on a percentage of your new Facebook fans. If the deal is good enough, and you do a good job promoting it, and you promise to deliver more deals in the future, people are bound to become a Facebook fan.

Action Item: Turn your next coupon promotion into an exclusive Facebook coupon. Publish the promo code to your Facebook wall, and make sure you mention that it is just for your adoring Facebook fans.

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https://www.facebook.com/

http://ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/Best_Practice_Guide_042811_10.pdf


Open It Up for Discussion — Surveys and Polls

The two previous tactics will help you acquire new followers, but how do you keep them from unsubscribing as soon as the event is over or the coupon deal ends? Well, that’s where this tactic comes in. It’s about keeping your fans involved in the conversation. And one of the best ways to do that is to open up a discussion.

Everyone has an opinion, and Facebook users love to share theirs. Use the platform to get fans to do exactly that. Setting-up either a survey or a poll on Facebook is a great way to encourage social reaction. Strive to have your content focus on problems that your audience frequently runs into, and/or ideas for how your services can be improved. This form of engagement helps your audience feel like they are involved and that their input could influence your brand/products/services.

For example, if you’re thinking about making changes to a product, putting something on sale, or developing a new product, just float the idea past your fans on Facebook. They’ll give you excellent feedback that you can use in the development process, and they’ll love the chance to get involved with a brand they admire.

Sears department stores once held a promotion that allowed their customers to vote for which items would go on sale the following week. They asked their Facebook fans and customers visiting their website to place their votes in the comments sections and through a survey checkbox in their e-carts. At the end of the week, the products with the most votes would go on sale (online and offline).

The campaign was a massive success because it managed to make subscribing to their Facebook account appealing. It also drove-up sales. A customer who voted for the item was more likely to go out and buy it when it went on sale. Even the customers who voted for an item that didn’t win the contest were more likely to stay tuned for future products and promotions.

Action Item: Use Facebook to start a product discussion. Ask your fans to vote on which product they would like to see on sale next week.

Rich Images

Submitting humorous and compelling images is an excellent way to keep your Facebook friends coming back to your business page, and to attract Likes and comments. You don’t even have to upload images that are directly related to your brand — they can be anything that your demographics might respond well to. For example, if you sell air fresheners and your target audience is mostly women 45–54, adding pictures of cute puppies centered around your air fresheners could be an excellent way to attract their attention, get them to Like the image, and thus increase your reach and traction on Facebook.

Contests

Product offerings and rewards are extremely effective in getting people to respond to your business page, but even better for growing your social audience. You can set-up creative contests (such as Oreo has done here) that center around your most dire needs at the time. For example, if you are looking to grow your Likes, offer coupons to every person who hits the Like button on your business page. The same idea can be used to get people to comment, submit testimony, or visit your website.

But don’t let a dismal response rate hold you back. Remember that when it comes to getting your audience to engage, the easiest way to go about getting what you want from them is to simply ask. Send out tweets and updates on a daily basis so that you stay in front of your audience and become a trusted source of information for them to return to. This will ease your ability later on to get them to Like your Facebook business page, hit the “+1” button on your Google + page, and post snippets about your products on Twitter.

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TwitterAt the end of the day, business is about relationships. Fortunately, Twitter helps you foster them with your key audiences. In fact, it’s the only platform that allows you to see what your biggest potential fan is doing at any given moment, what they have already done, and most importantly, what they want to do next. Because of that, you can use it to obtain crucial information about your target market’s influencers, and keep a finger on the pulse of your industry.

Twitter’s mechanics can be a little tricky at first, so if you need a primer on how to use its features, check out a few of these fantastic video tutorials on YouTube. But if you’re ready to start leveraging the platform to get the prominent voices in your vertical to share your content and products, below are a couple of tactics that will help:

Engage

Target individuals by @mentioning them specifically. Talk to them on a personal level by asking them about their experience with your products/brand, what they would like to see from it in the future, what would make their life easier in an ideal world, and other topics that would encourage a response.

Search

Twitter’s advanced search page (http://twitter.com/search) is one of the platform’s most powerful features. It enables you to find consumers in your industry who have questions or need help. For example, let’s say you sell dog food. Search Twitter for common questions pet owners have, and try to help them get answers. Don’t push your product in their face; simply answer their question and try to provide value. If they see that you’re a helpful individual, they will follow you. Later on, your tweet about your new line of dog food may hit their timeline just when they are considering upgrading Fido’s pet food.

Stalk Your Market Influencers

One of the biggest complaints about Twitter is that people just share what they’ve eaten for breakfast, pictures of the places they’ve visited, and ramble-on about their inane interests (like that Justin Bieber concert they went to last night). But those seemingly mundane tweets provide excellent insights into their whereabouts and personality traits. As a marketer, you can take advantage of those insights and create opportunities for relationship building and content promotion.

Let’s say you’re trying to get that new infographic you developed shared on a site like Lifehacker.com. It has a huge built-in audience perfect for your particular product, and you’d like to tap into that. Well, pick out one of the Lifehacker writers, and start following them on Twitter. Find out what their interests are, who they talk to on the

platform, and if they’re ever going to be in your area asking for directions. Then, start publishing things that speak to their specific interests and get them to talk to you. That’s relationship building 101.

After a while, you’re going to get their attention, and that’s when you can start building a relationship with them that you can later leverage for content promotion. Gain their trust now, and then when you ask them to write a piece about your latest content, they’ll be more likely to share it with their readership.

By the way, there’s a great free tool out there that can make this whole process a lot easier. It’s called IFTTT.com. You can use it to set up alerts to help you get in front of your influencers at opportune times, like when they mention a relevant idea or ask a question that is aligned with your interests.

Action Item: Pick a target influencer in your market, and set-up alerts that let you know whenever they mention something related to your product, service, brand, location, or anything you think you can provide information on. Stalk them, give them content they’re looking for, and build that relationship.

Use Hashtags

Grow your reach and attract new followers by mentioning themes and concepts that are trending worldwide. Make comments and pose questions that are relevant to a particular trend and include a hashtag “#” in front of the trending theme so your followers can go directly to the particular topic and learn more. This will get your tweet in front of the masses (who are interested in a particular trending topic), and help get them to jump on your brand’s bandwagon.

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http://mashable.com/2009/05/31/twitter-tutorials-youtube/

http://twitter.com/search

http://twitter.com/search

http://lifehacker.com/

https://ifttt.com/


Blog

One of the best ways to grow an audience is to create unique, compelling content. Not only does it give people a reason to follow you in the first place, but it also generates traffic to your website, and spurs retweets, which places your tweet in the timeline of your audiences’ followers.

Analyze Your Followers and Tweet Targeted Value

Twitter is about relationship building through the sharing of information. To carve out a space for your brand in the Twitter feed, you’re going to have to show value with every tweet. If you’ve been stalking your targets properly, you should know what they like to talk about, what they like to do, what they share, where they go, etc., and you can leverage that information when you broadcast a tweet to your followers. It will help you ensure that your content is aligned with your followers’ interests.

For example, if your company sells scissors, and you’ve got a follower base that constantly talks about scrapbooking, then a tweet about cutting doilies probably wouldn’t be the most valuable thing to tweet about. In fact, when you tweet something off base — content that doesn’t align with your audiences’ interests — you run the risk of losing them. You have to stay tapped into your audience so you know what they’re more likely to respond to.

The same holds true for growing your audience. If you really want to talk about doilies, then you need to gain followers who are into that sort of thing. You can use tools like Follower Wonk to find the big players in your niche, and then stalk them, tweet at them with relevant and useful information that they’ll respond to, and get them to follow you back. Do that enough times, and you’ll end up with a follower base that responds to your doily tweets instead of one that ignores them.

It is important to cultivate your Twitter followers in this way so that you’re tweeting relevant information 100% of the time. But you also need to develop the list of people that you follow, and keep your own feed relevant to your brand’s topic areas. Look to follow accounts that talk about your industry. Seek out customers, vendors, trade associations, news outlets, conference speakers, competitors, and target consumers. This will enable you to best take advantage of the opportunities they present.

To illustrate the importance of carefully cultivating your follow list, let’s go back to that scissor company example from before. If the staffer managing their Twitter account is following people like Kim Kardashian — instead of individuals whose interests are more aligned with their offering — they might miss the scrapbooking star who developed a new portfolio using their scissors. As a result, they would also miss the opportunity to share that news with the world.

In general, think of Twitter as a gigantic information fire hose. In order to drink from it, you have to apply as many filters as possible. If you notice that one of the profiles you’re following isn’t relevant to your message anymore, remove it. Keep both your followers and your follow list as targeted as you possibly can. Doing so will help ensure that you’re reading information you can use, and that you are feeding them information they want.

Action Item: Take a moment to read through the last few days of tweets in your Twitter feed. If you find that a profile is taking up too much “real estate” without providing anything useful, cut it out of your list, and replace it by following at least five new profiles related to your niche.

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http://followerwonk.com/


YouTubeInstead of spending thousands, or maybe even millions of dollars producing a television ad campaign that would only last a few months, you can use YouTube to get in front of people where they are spending a lot of time: on their computers and smartphones. Today the platform commands over 3 billion views per day!

Having a YouTube channel to house brand commercials, peer reviews, and product testimony is easy to do, costs next to nothing, and allows you to reach entirely new audiences each and every day. Below are a few tips to help you tap into this awesome channel:

Brand Your YouTube Channel

If you are ready to capitalize on YouTube, the first thing you should do is set-up your own channel on the platform (as Procter & Gamble has done in the example below). This will enable you to house all of your rich video content in one environment. In addition, be sure to include a YouTube button on your website, ideally on every landing page, but at least on the homepage, above the fold. This approach will allow you to attach your entire video presence to your brand, enrich your SEO efforts, and enhance your brand name.

Action Item: Set-up a YouTube channel and place its social button on the homepage of your website. Offer a series of videos that speak to the performance of your products, and one that aims to gain consumer trust and loyalty by being creative and even humorous.

Use Specific Titles

Beyond having good content, you also need to develop a great title for each video. This will improve its visibility in the search results. When you create your title, take the purpose of the video into consideration as it should dictate the title style. For instance, if you are trying to capture consumers who are looking for more general concepts or themes, your title should take a creative approach — look for something catchy and compelling.

But if the purpose of your video is to highlight consumer product reviews, go with a very direct title as it will help online users who search for product reviews find your video right away. You should also include your brand name, and follow it with the name of the product being reviewed. This direct approach will increase your search visibility as online users tend to search with basic terms. Crest provides us with a great example below:

Action Item: Go into your YouTube analytics and find 25% of your videos with the lowest views. Optimize the titles of those videos so that they are more enticing from a click-through rate standpoint, and make sure they include the keyword you’re trying to get the video to rank for.

Video Description and Call to Action

It is also important to create a compelling description that conveys what your video is all about, and leads the viewer to a next step, such as visiting your website or making a purchase. When you write the description, think of it as an elevator pitch. It should sound natural, and be succinct (less than 450 characters). But it should end with a clear call to action, and include a link that will take the viewer to another step in their search progression (as Crest has done below).

Action Item: Write a few brief descriptions for your videos. Make sure you ask the viewer to do something, and provide the link for them to follow through with your request. Announce new videos on your other social media profiles to spark instant reaction, and watch the views add up!

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http://www.youtube.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/ProcterGamble


Chapter 11:

Social Network Tools and Automation As you work to grow your social audience, you’re going to find that juggling campaigns that span multiple social platforms and staying on top of all of those mentions, Likes, fans, connections, and whatever else, is a lot easier said than done . Considering that, you’re going to be tempted to get a tool set that claims to make all of your social media woes go away .

As you examine various social media management tool suites, keep one thing in mind: the more you automate a process, the more impersonal your campaigns become. Remember, social networking is about intimate connections between human beings. If you throw too many algorithms, robots, or faceless logos into the mix, you’re going to dilute your campaigns and remove the social element from social networking.

With that said though, automation for social media management can be a good thing. You can use it to cut down on a lot of the monotonous tasks, and/or set-up automatic alerts to keep you in the loop when you can’t watch the social feeds closely. However, there must always be an actual human being behind the scenes thinking and ready to respond to those @mentions or capitalize on a marketing opportunity.

Once again, Samsung provides us with a great example. They made a genius social marketing play for their Galaxy III S smartphone that could not have been accomplished by an entirely automated campaign. Shane Bennett, an avid fan of all things Samsung, left a message on their Facebook wall asking for a free phone. In exchange for the free phone, he offered up a picture of a dragon that he drew. Here’s what the post looked like:

Now, if Samsung had gone overboard with their social tools and removed the human element from the equation, they might have ignored this request or sent a generic form letter in response. Luckily, they had a clever human behind the wheel. Samsung posted the below on Shane’s wall in response to his request:

Then, the story of the dragon and the kangaroo went viral on the Internet, and Samsung netted a lot of media coverage from it. So much so in fact, that they decided to send Shane his very own customized Samsung Galaxy S III.

The point is that you shouldn’t look to social tools and automation to handle everything for you. In order to be effective, social marketing requires a personal and hands-on approach. If you get to the point where you’re just hitting one button and automatically sharing on every platform at exactly the same time of day, every day, you’re missing the point of what makes social networking so great. And you’d be doing your customers and your marketing efforts a disservice.

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So, what tools are good for reducing the clutter without cutting out the human element? We’ve men-tioned some in the previous chapters, but below are a few that can really make a difference in your social cam-paigns:

TweetDeckIf you’re struggling to manage all of those Twitter feeds and need a little assistance, TweetDeck is the app for you. It brings you more flexibility and insight by allowing you to arrange all of your feeds, add powerful customizable filters, schedule out tweets, monitor and analyze what you’re tweeting and what’s being tweeted to you. Definitely check it out if you’re starting to get serious with the Twitter platform.

Tweet Adder Tweet Adder allows you to automate finding and following people on Twitter. It enables you to search profiles for keywords, filter by geographical location, or find out who is following your competitors. However, note that because this paid tool offers a lot of automation capabilities, it should be used with caution. Most of these automated features are against Twitter’s terms of service, so it may put your account at risk. It is recommended that you only use the tool to search for people to follow, and you may want to use a dummy account to do so.

IFTTTWho doesn’t like alerts? IFTTT lets you set-up sophisticated cross platform “if then” statements so that you can stay on top of everything going on in your vertical. For example, you can use it to set-up an alert to email you if anyone mentions your brand or any of your targeted keywords. Or you can use it to set-up alerts to let you know if anyone mentions that they need help with a news story related to your content. There are endless possibilities with this great tool.

Buffer This is a great little browser extension. It enables you to quickly convert text on a page into a tweet that you can add to your “buffer” or queue, and send to your networks at the best possible times. This means you can store great quotes or articles in one sitting, and Buffer will spread-out those posts through the day.

TriberrWith a new twist on tribe marketing, Triberr is a content marketing platform where groups of bloggers gather to share each other’s content. After you conect your company blog and join a few industry relevant tribes, your content will be automatically imported into the site and converted into shareable formats for the bloggers in your tribe to easily share. With bloggers from well-known blogs like Forbes, Inc., Mashable, and Huffington Post, you can curate a feed of great content to share with your social networks, either manually or automatically.

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http://www.tweetdeck.com/

http://www.tweetadder.com/

https://ifttt.com/

http://bufferapp.com/

http://triberr.com/


HootSuite:This social media management tool is similar to TweetDeck, but it allows you to manage all of your social profiles across any platform. You can use it to schedule messages and tweets, track brand mentions, analyze social media traffic, and measure the results of your campaigns. If you’re struggling to keep track of what’s going on with your Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc. accounts, then you should check out this tool and make your life easier.

Any of the tools mentioned here will help you make better use of your time while you run your social campaigns, but you’ll need to explore a bit and find what tools work best for your particular work flow style and campaign requirements. There are thousands of great social networking tools out there, and they all do things a little bit differently. Just remember that you always need a human being behind the wheel, and try to stay away from anything that hands over total control to impersonal machines.

Conclusion

MASTERING THE BASICS. Social SEO is the use of social signals to increase a brand’s rankings within the search engine results page . Search engines consider social signals as endorsements where customers are saying they trust a particular site . As search engines further consider social signals, brands will need to invest in Social SEO .

MAKING IT HAPPEN. Catalyst breaks down Social SEO into three core segments: on-site optimization, social profile optimization, and social network optimization . On-site optimization ensures your website is built to communicate with your social assets . Brands should feature buttons linking to their social profiles as well as prominently display share buttons on their blog . Social profile optimization ensures the content on your profiles consistently answers consumer questions with targeted keywords . The third pillar is social network optimization where basic social best practices such as sharing engaging, helpful, and high quality content frequently is vital to Social SEO . These three pillars will help jumpstart your Social SEO strategy .

TOOLS TO SUCCEED. The first step is to be sure your brand is present and active on important social networks such as Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube . Offering network specific promotions, coupons, or content is important to growing your following . There is an array of tools and software out there to assist in building out your social network . Some are automated, which can be tempting, but remember that social networks still emphasize human interaction .

Now that you have mastered what Social SEO is, how it works, and why it matters, it’s time to get started! CONTACT CATALYST TODAY!

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http://hootsuite.com/

http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/company/contact/


About Catalyst

Catalyst, a pioneer in developing strategic digital marketing services since 1998, is renowned for search marketing excellence in servicing Fortune 1000 brands. Headquartered in Boston with offices in New York, Chicago, Seattle, Toronto and Montreal, Catalyst serves numerous B2B and B2C clients in a of variety industries. The search engine marketing firm prides itself on being THE Search Innovator of the industry. Catalyst’s offerings include: search engine optimization (SEO), paid search marketing, Social SEO, content strategy, digital asset optimization, mobile search, e-retail optimization, local search optimization, global search, competitive reporting, and more. Catalyst is a wholly owned subsidiary of WPP, the world’s largest communications services group. For more information about Catalyst, please visit the company’s website at CatalystSearchMarketing.com.

Proper attribution requires that this eBook clearly be identified as “Catalyst Social SEO Strategies: Mastering the Art of Social SEO." Copies/PDF of the book can be downloaded at www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/pubs/social-seo-strategies.

Questions regarding this eBook should be directed to Catalyst Marketing Assistant, Freddy Dabaghi, at (617) 663-1160 or [email protected].

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www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/pubs/social-seo-strategies

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Social SEO Strategies: Mastering the Art of Social SEO

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