Why Your SEO Efforts Will Fail Without a Social Strategy by Rachel Serpa

Since the dawn of MySpace, social media has managed to creep into every area of our lives. Admit it: you check yourself in at the airport, find all of your favorite recipes on Pinterest, and even catch yourself thinking 140 characters at a time. Social networks have infiltrated business as well, with both B2C and B2B marketers realizing that the only way to effectively connect with modern consumers is to build social experiences around their brands, products and services.

Although they were at one time considered the north and south poles of marketing, social now plays a significant role in shaping search results. Here are three reasons why your SEO strategies need to be social, and how you can start leveraging social media to improve your search performance today.

More UGC = Better SEO

SEO is a huge pain point for many marketers as they struggle through keyword discovery and fight against the conglomerates that be to surface under phrases that people actually use. When it comes to search rankings, relevant, quality content is key, and when customers post comments or reviews and syndicate them across their social networks, they provide valuable user generated content that improves keyword performance. User generated content is especially useful because it puts your product or service in terms typically used by consumers, uncovering new keywords and increasing searchability. Websites that feature ratings and reviews typically experience a 10-20% increase in CTR on search engine results pages (Inchoo).

#SearchingForHashtags

Once a Twitter-ism, the hashtag has emerged as an acceptable and universal means of communication across the digital landscape, even finding its way into verbal conversations. Consumers now classify and search for specific content using hashtag terms across social networks like Pinterest, Instagram and LinkedIn, and search engines including Yahoo, Google and Bing have recently amplified hashtag visibility in search results. Smart brands are increasing reach and visibility by leveraging both new and existing hashtags to optimize event promotions, user generated content, branding initiatives and more.

“Social Search Engines”

Over the past several years, major search engines have been increasingly relying on users’ social graphs to provide relevant and timely search results. For example, not only does Bing showcase tweets and other social media posts related to users’ searches, but by connecting Bing with their Facebook profiles, users can also see status updates and photos that their connections have posted that are relevant to their search terms. Connecting with consumers via social, having a strong social presence and increasing content shares across networks is becoming mandatory for brands as search results become increasingly social.

As the paths to search and social success continue to merge, only the brands that learn how to incorporate social media into their search strategies will rise above the competition  - literally.

Source: http://blog.gigya.com/why-your-seo-efforts-will-fail-without-a-social-strategy/

The Anatomy of a Connected Consumer by Rachel Serpa

Twenty years ago, the best way to reach consumers was to come up with a memorable TV commercial, design an eye-catching editorial and maybe, if you were feeling tech savvy, run a banner ad or two. Needless to say, today’s consumer landscape has changed drastically, and continues to evolve at a dizzying pace.

The Internet of Things will account for 9 billion devices by 2018 (Business Insider), mobile will account for 21% of all online purchases by 2015 (Google), and social network users will surpass 2 billion by 2016 (eMarketer). Ironically, despite the explosion of technology, channels and devices, today’s continuously connected consumers are harder to reach than ever before.

The below infographic breaks down the anatomy of the connected consumer to help your brand more effectively reach, engage and convert customers across today’s mobile and socially connected landscape.

For more information on how to successfully reach and convert connected consumers, download our Ultimate Guide to 2014 Marketing Success.

Source: http://blog.gigya.com/infographic-the-anatomy-of-a-connected-consumer/

3 Challenges Facing Marketers in 2014 By Emma Tzeng

It’s nearly unthinkable to consider how far marketing has traversed in the past year alone. While marketers continued to hone their social strategies and experiment with big data and omni-channel tactics in 2013, this coming year will pose its own hurdles, as businesses concentrate their efforts on unifying user experiences, achieving provable social ROI, and knowing their customers in even deeper, more actionable ways.

This article dissects three major challenges marketers will come head to head with this year, along with action plans for tackling and overcoming these obstacles.

Challenge #1: Unifying Cross-Channel Experiences with First Party Data

In 2013, eMarketer reported that 45% of consumers prefer shopping experiences that combine online, mobile, and in-store interactions. As customers interact more with brands across multiple devices, however, marketers need to figure out how to obtain a consistent view of consumer identity over a variety of mediums.

To complicate the matter, traditional retargeting techniques that utilize third party cookie data to construct inferred consumer personas don’t translate to mobile. As the average time spent on mobile devices exceeds desktop usage rates and consumers become increasingly social both online and offline, marketers are more pressed than ever to rely on first party data to inform their marketing strategies and craft unique customer experiences.

(Source: eMarketer)

Solution: Social Login for Access to First Party Data

The best way to acquire firsthand insights on your users is to start at the source — their social networks. Social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ collect millions of actionable data points on their users such as their locations, emails, genders, interests, likes, social graphs, and more. Businesses can gain direct access to these insights by leveraging social login on their digital properties, which captures social profile information in a permission-based manner.

For example, Dutch airline KLM incorporates social login into its digital experience, offering four different social provider options and displaying a prominent call to action for a streamlined user experience that encourages more consumers to log in socially. As these users choose social login, KLM gets access to valuable social profile information that it can leverage to personalize user experiences across channels.

In KLM’s instance, the airline uses social login to power its Meet & Seat program, which lets flyers see who else is on board their flight and select seats based on other flyers’ seat assignments.

By integrating social into its in-flight experiences, KLM gathers valuable data on its customers while facilitating serendipitous, memorable opportunities for their flyers to connect with one another offline.

Challenge #2: Proving the ROI of Social

As we discussed earlier, social login is the gateway to firsthand consumer insights. These insights, in turn, can be analyzed and measured to determine just how much direct value social delivers to your marketing initiatives.

Solution: Measurable Insights Offer a Deeper Dive into ROI

We’ve outlined three factors to measure to effectively determine the ROI of your social marketing efforts:

• Increase in registrations – How much have site registration numbers increased since implementing social login?
• Value of a registered user – To determine the value of a registered user, you’ll want to examine the estimated return for new user registrations. Take the following example: An ecommerce site registers 10,000 users a month. Of these registrations, 500 users go on to make purchases on the site over the span of a year. If each purchaser’s average shopping cart conversion is $75, then the value per registered user is $3.75. What is the value per registered user for your business?
• Decrease in forgotten password help desk issues – When users log in socially, they save themselves from having to remember another username and password combination; your business, in turn, avoids the hassle of dealing with lost password recovery issues. What is the decrease in support costs since implementing social login?

Check out our white paper, Path to ROI: Boosting Demand Gen and Improving Conversions with Social Login, for a deeper dive into how capturing social identities directly affects ROI.

Challenge #3: Knowing Your Customers in Even Deeper, More Actionable Ways

As users’ Internet habits evolve, we’re seeing a greater shift in online sharing: consumers are posting personal photographs, life events, and more across their social networks. This move towards a more connected, open social web reflects how consumers and businesses should interact in a landscape that encourages the sharing of users’ information in a safe, valuable way.

Solution: Schemaless, Social-Optimized Database for Seamless Data Storage

To facilitate this process, you should invest in a database that is not only secure but also fully equipped to handle the varied, dynamic nature of social data. This database structure is known as a schemaless database, and it enables sites and apps to store all types of unstructured (social and behavioral) data without any constraints.

After finding a secure data management system to store and manage your users’ data, you’ll want to invest in a marketer-friendly, web-based dashboard that enables marketers to access user data, define their audience segments, and apply these findings directly to their marketing strategies. This grants you full control over your marketing efforts, allowing you to work with the data to glean new insights on your user base and turn these insights into measurable actions.

In 2014, Personalization Triumphs

As consumers continue gravitating towards personal online experiences, it’s important for businesses wanting to retain a loyal customer base to remain a step ahead of their users. This means swapping mass marketing techniques for tailored messages that speak to users on an individual level. Businesses that successfully carry this out can expect to see real ROI on their marketing campaigns.

Source: http://blog.gigya.com/3-challenges-facing-marketers-in-2014/