Interdependency of Search and Social to Create Engaging Strategies #heweb11

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Photo by david.train, Flickr.

In “Search & Social Convergence,” Martha Gabriel explains how everything on the web has become social. Search results are impacted by social media; social media are successful because of search. Meanwhile, content must be the driving force behind our marketing strategies.

Search & Social

• Today, people can process content anywhere, anytime.
• Mobile leads to real-time web, geo-location, internet of things, search, video, social everything, and transmedia transitions links (going from one type of media to another).
• 25 percent of the first search engine results for the top 20 brands are links to social media content. Social media has become the main farm of content.
• 71 percent of people search after seeing an ad.
• Behavioral targeting: Google uses 57 signals to personalize your results.
• About 200 factors affect SEO ranking, including social graph metrics.
• More and more of search results are earned content and not paid ads.
• The evolution of SEO has led to cooperation among parties instead of competition for search result placement.

Social & Search

• 34 percent of Facebook Fan Page traffic comes from search engines.
• It is necessary to optimize content on all kinds of social media index platforms.
• Don’t just think about titles when posting content. Take advantage of tags and descriptions.

Content

• If social media and search are the heart of our marketing strategies, content is the blood.
• Consider social, search, and mobile when developing engaging content.
• Content consumption = main function of interface use.
• Content: Conceptual essence of something (idea, work, thought, situation, etc.) It can be embedded in any language or media.
• There are so many platforms for content now (web, social media, mixed reality, mobile, and more). We must be careful not to spread ourselves too thin across the available platforms.
• The concept of “real-time” creates a content issue. Content must be relevant (important in time and in space), and timely.
• Relevance is a magnet for attention. How can our content be relevant for an audience? Napoleon said “There are two levers for moving men…” These levers are interest and fear. Interesting content will attract audiences.
• The Fun Theory: Can fun change behavior? How can make our content fun?
• Content has to be visible, accessible, and available, utilizing relevance, multiple platforms, search optimization, and transparency.

Transmedia Storytelling

• A larger audience can be engaged with content if it is shared across multiple media platforms.
• Your strategy is as good as the content it produces.
• There is no such thing as “digital marketing.” It’s all about marketing to people, and digital is just one component.
• We need to make our content available in many ways, bridging many platforms. This also fosters content sharing.
• Suggested resources for transmedia storytelling: The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell and Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins.

You can find more information, including great examples from today’s presentation at slideshare.net/marthagabriel.