Social Media – the new customer engagement channel
Social Media – the new customer engagement channelMark Chapman is an SEO specialist and has been kind enough to write this blog about some of his experiences with social media and the resulting SEO benefits. Mark also runs a very active blog on knife crime – am sure we all support him in these honourable efforts.
It is growing increasingly clear that achieving business success using social media is becoming somewhat like a quest for the Holy Grail and the majority of those on the quest are not likely to find it anytime soon. Research apparently shows that marketers are floundering about trying to work out how to deliver on the commercial potential of social media. About one in five are not doing any tracking of social media activities. Of those that are counting, the evidence shows that the most important metric for marketers at present is not conversions or sales – marketers are, in fact, measuring just clicks or visits. It is hardly surprising then that just about half of all marketers do not know if their campaigns are successful or not.
However, despite this lack of proof about commercial success, the research – the UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report from Econsultancy – provides evidence that social media is becoming a greater part of the marketing mix.
Forrester Research forecasts that spending on social media marketing will grow to over $3bn by 2014, a huge increase on this year’s $700+ million. Based on this, the future for social media might seem rosy. However, a closer look at the figures indicates that business success utilising social media may stagnate or at least fail to make significant progress.
This is because by 2014, 59% of total online ad spend will be on SEO and PPC. That represents $31.5bn of the total online ad spending pie which is more than 10 times the size of the social media slice. In short then, maybe Econsultancy is correct that social media is a large, fat red herring as far as capitalising on its commercial potential is concerned?
Well, would I say “hold your horses”? – I don’t think so.
The biggest money-making opportunities will almost certainly come from investment in search, so SEO firms should not be going out of business – but social media is here to stay and, to succeed, companies will need to be part of this online society or risk becoming ‘virtual’ pariahs, outsiders or outcasts.
Business must work to understand social media. It is about relationships with customers, engaging with target audiences, listening to those consumers and developing conversations with them.
These may have been seen, in the past, as ’soft’ elements of business relationships and perhaps they do not lend themselves to immediate, measurable commercial success and profits. Yet common sense dictates that failing to have human, social relationships with customers cannot be productive – or profitable – for organisations in the long run.
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I have achieved some successes with social media. When a law firm client advised me about celebrity figures they were representing, I set about timing the law firm’s announcement with blog, Twitter and Facebook commentary. In addition, it was possible to comment on national and international media websites, providng links from well ranked pages into the law firm’s website.
Traffic rose significantly and from nowhere, the law firm achieved page 1 rankings on Google for media law-related search queries. Partly this was due to the trust that the website had already established within the search engines. Using SEO strategies, the website was being recognised by the search engines as a great source of information about legal matters.
When the major legal news story broke, I was able to capitalise on the good search results already achieved and help promote the law firm by pushing this media issue to the top of the rankings.
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The biggest issue social media faces as a potential commercial channel is whether it can be a viable medium that delivers return on investment. At present, the current truth probably is that the jury is still out on that.
However, it is vital that businesses become engaged in the social media sphere. It may take time but when large tranches of their customer base dwell in that space, smart companies and firms must also be there with them, talking with them about issues that matter in their personal and business lives. It’s plain common sense really.
