It is this suite of measuring tools that, in my mind, make Adwords, a much more powerful marketing tool than traditional advertising methods. If you sell trainers, it would make sense to advertise in Running Weekly. The media company that owns the magazine will tell you the demographic of their readership.  But they won’t be able to follow the conversion process or give you any details on user behaviour. What was the reaction of readers to the ad? Did it influence a purchasing decision? Did readers like the ad?

Adwords can do all of this, and therefore enable you to be responsive to your target market’s activity. Tracking how customers come on to your website and what they do there, can help influence the layout and design of your landing page to ultimately increase conversions.

You can also use landing pages to measure the effectiveness of your social media efforts. You can design landing pages around the social media campaign, and then use Google Analytics to track traffic and conversions.

Social media for companies is not about being social; it is about growing our business. So the best way to measure your efforts is to see how many customers your efforts generate. If you know a direct mail campaign at a cost of £5000, generates 50 customers, then you can spend £5000 on social media. If it generates more than 50, then it is clear that social media returns a better ROI than direct mail for your business.

Conversions are the key metric; not twitter followers or facebook friends. If your social media campaign can exceed your existing marketing efforts, then it can be considered a success.

Even with a resurgence in CEO and PR credibility, Google is still the source which people rely on most for information about corporations. With transparency and authenticity, the main buzzwords now, companies need to spread their message far and wide. Search engines remain the first port of call for information hungry minds.So companies have to inform their audience in different ways. Trusting in the new ways, will enhance your reputation among the online audience.

Conversation: Dialogue. PR:Monologue.

So PR and communications have to evolve to be effective. An official spokesperson is fine by all means, but as, Sally Falkow points out, don’t expect that to satisfy your audience. People are out there talking about your company (or your clients in the case of a PR agency). They want a conversation with an employee, a human being within an organisation.

Dell – their success speaks for itself

Dell take social media seriously. There is a rumour going around that they make $25,000 per tweet. Using Twitter as a means of clearing stock to a loyal bargain-hungry following has been perfected by Dell. So, it is no surprise to hear that Dell have just put 5000 employees through rigorous social media training. They know it works. Fortune has favoured the brave in this instance. Now they want more.

Listening increases trust

So take the time to find your customers and prospects, and start talking to them. Bring down the corporate walls, and show that there are humans operating inside that building. What will this achieve?

The benefits of Listening

• Clients will tell you what they want.
• They will “advocate” your brand for free.
• They will assist in your R&D. Customer involvement in developing your products is priceless. Don’t listen to Mastercard!

So what to do next?

• Get you and your team some social media training..fast. They are your best communicators, and you are not even using them.
• SEO and SEM are more important than ever..get your corporate news as highly ranked as possible.
• Provide social features on all areas of your website and social media platforms. Let people find your news easily and simple to share.

One way to increase adoption and results is to develop a process that is followed by anyone in communications, media relations or PR that is in a position to publish content online.

By adding a process, it adds accountability as well as the likelihood that a much greater quantity of content will be keyword optimised and promoted to extend the reach of news direct to end consumers as well as to journalists and reporters doing online research.

Here is a possible framework, which we hope will help you.

• Objectives:  What are your goals? You can’t finish your mission without an end goal, so it’s important to identify some kind of general website traffic, citations, links, social engagement and organic referring traffic goals.

• Audience:    Who are you trying to reach? This question can be answered at a broad level in relation to online PR and news content as well as at the individual content level. Keywords and promotion tactics can vary whether it’s direct to consumer, journalists, analysts or bloggers that you’re after.

• Social Conversations & SERPs:  Listening to social conversations about the topics important to your company, brand and constituents is essential for knowing where to engage and promote. Think of it as reconnaissance.  The SERPs, (Search Engine Results Pages) are your SEO battlefield and it’s important to understand what types of content is being displayed for your most important keyword phrases. While personalization is a factor that can make the SERP experience vary according to your location and web history, it still makes sense to identify what media types are included: web pages, images, video, blog posts, news, etc.

• Resources:   Content, people, processes.  What content and media do you have to promote? If you put out a press release, adding images and/or video can increase distribution quite a bit.  Who do you have available to you to help? Copywriters, IT, marketing. Adding SEO and Social Media components to content authoring and publishing processes will ensure more of your content goes out in an optimized state.
• Tactics:  What channels to optimize? This is where information captured in Listening and SERPs helps you decide what kind of content and which social channels to optimize for.  If news, images and video are represented in the search results and there are relevant conversations happening around social media sites including some or all of those media, then your “marching orders” are to leverage those types of media in your news optimization.

• Measure:  SEO, Social, PR. Knowing when you’re a success is important for productivity as well as reporting upstream in your organization. Setting goals, making benchmark measurements and then tracking progress as skills and effectiveness are refined will help you stay on track.

SEO insiders have wondered whether this new search innovation would affect placement strategies. And the simple answer is: yes. Yes, there will be changes to the way SEO professionals run their clients’ campaigns. Yes, this will affect the industry as a whole. And yes, we believe SEO professionals will have to adapt to meet ever-evolving needs.

But to think that this development is rocking the SEO world is to misunderstand the realities of the industry. In its roughly 15 years of existence, SEO has grown from being a small wildcat operation run by webmasters and content services to being one of the most dynamic, fast-growing sectors of the tech market. The reason for this rapid growth is because — not in spite –- of the constantly evolving nature of search engines.

Of course, as with any complex question about a dynamically evolving industry, there is a caveat. While the Bing-Facebook agreement and the recent updates to Google will change elements of how we do our business, the fundamentals will remain the same. As much as innovation shapes the day-to-day processes of optimization, the core foundations of the industry remain unchanged. The goal was — and still is — putting clients at the top of results pages, whether this is through organic search, paid search or social media.

Social media is nothing new in the world of online marketing. Facebook alone has 500 million users. We have already seen certain Twitter feeds included in Google search results. Before long, results may integrate other social networking sites, like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite and myriad other sites that haven’t even been developed yet. For SEO professionals, this change highlights the need to integrate social networking if they haven’t already.

The Bing-Facebook agreement is indicative of the many changes that have taken SEO from a small-time game to a major, innovative industry. SEO is not about counter-punching, and it’s not about simply reacting to the changing search-engine landscape. Instead, it is about growing alongside search engines. It is about evolving with them to ensure that searchers get the results they need.

For years now, successful SEO firms have not been focusing their efforts strictly on organic search results. They’ve been steadily evolving along with changes in search engines: new Google algorithms, the emergence of Bing, the development of Google Local, instant searches, paid search, and searchable Twitter feeds. To be successful, SEO firms now need to become something more advanced: Digital Media Agencies.

Digital Media Ageniess are about handling the many online representation needs of their clients. While top search engine placement remains the major goal, it is just one aspect of what they seek to do. A Digital Media Agency also seeks to manage a client’s online reputation, create and maintain their social presence, and handle the many other aspects of a client’s online brand.

Will SEO professionals have to change their strategy in reaction to a new social media paradigm? The answer is yes. Their evolution into full-fledged Digital Media Agencies is imperative. And as the social and search industries continue to change, so too will Digital Media Agencies need to innovate.

There are many techniques involved with organic SEO . However, without doubt the most important ingredient is quality, relevant back links from third party sites.

Other important elements are a combination of good page titles, relevant text, compliant well structured code and online self promotion. The proliferation of social networks, and increasing popularity of YouTube and Flickr. enables you to attract a wide audience through a selection of different media.

You bring in traffic by using content that works, linking strategies, and adding value via interactivity and a great user experience, not paid search listings.

Thousands of companies will promise the earth and deliver nothing; your spam inbox is probably full of them!!

There are a lot of companies out there who like to lead people to believe that reaching the top of Google is a simple and easy process….it’s a lie. It is a long and drawn out process but one that is full of rewards and benefits once you have achieved it.

Should you wish to enquire about Organic SEO and have a realistic budget to achieve this, then please do not hesitate to contact us by our enquiry form or by giving us a call on 01743 244204

We tend not to suggest using online advertsising so much, as much as anything due to a lack of knowledge. I think we need to look at this again. The course, part of my MSc (nose to the grindstone now!), was largely about the use of various display advertising formats, CPMs, CPAs, CPCs and the like. It has to be said that for certain offerings, this channel should be used – in conjunction we would suggest with the more standard routes such as search and email marketing. That sentence in itself is contentious, as for some people their view of the world would be the opposite with displays being the primary focus. I will leave it up to you to decide on your own priorities.

The key point however is that online advertsing is continuing to grow http://bit.ly/2oqCxP. This is all good news for those suppliers involved in the digital arena. It is also good news for clients, as online promotion has one huge benefit over traditional media – MEASURABILITY! Whilst you will never know how many people see your ad in the paper you will certainly know the reach of your online promotions. If nothing else, we would recommend you review the allocations of your marketing budgets and check those pounds are working their hardest for you.