SEO Tip - December 2009

 Tis' The Season For Going Social

I've been a bit of a skeptic, or scrooge if you prefer about Social Media. I can understand the value of a blog, I do think it benefits a website, as long as the content is relevant and updated frequently. However after looking at other aspects of Social Media like Face Book and Twitter, I struggle to see the business case for it. I believe making the case for high quality SEO can sometimes be a challenge, but in the end we know that a top ten ranking will increase traffic to your website, so to that end just like a retail store if we can put more qualified people in the store, we have done our jobs.

So I have been in search of finding a way to measure the same type of return from a Social Media campaign, and just this week, one of my clients shared a fantastic story with me about how a Social Media campaign launched less than 90 days ago has provided a significant returned. What's even more interesting is that the return isn't where you would expect to find it. Our expectation is that if we launch a Social Campaign it will go viral, lots of traffic to the site, and our products and services will fly off the virtual shelves.

Our client is a medium sized retailer with a strong 20 + year history, and outstanding customer loyalty. The online presence was average, but very little Search or Internet Marketing had been done. We helped with the Search Marketing campaign, while one of our partners helped this company ramp up, or really jump start a Social Media campaign. The fact that the company was already established and had a great fan base helped, but the speed with which the loyal customers flocked to the new social media outlets was amazing. Within 90 days the company launched a Facebook Fan Page, Twitter Page, YouTube Channel, and added video to their existing blog. In the same 90 day period the hits on all of these new social outlets increased rapidly and this month the number of Facebook Fans they have puts them in the top 2% of all Facebook Fan pages. Impressive right? I think so, but what about the numbers? Are sales up? I would say it's too early to tell, but this is where the story gets interesting.

Here's the short version of the result, based on the dynamic conversation you can have using Social Media, our client was able to collect focused customer demand data from thousands of current customers. Our client took this information which they collected in less than 24 hours to a distributor and the end result could increase the retail distribution into more than 5,000 new retail stores. It's about more than moving products from a sales page online, it's about moving from a monologue to a dialogue, and using the conversation to give the customer what they want, where they want it and when they want it. SearchRankings.Net is currently working on a new Social Media Jump Start kit and it will be available in the first quarter 2010.

One of the significant benefits of social media is that it has the capacity to change the conversation from a monologue to a dialogue. Instead of pushing a message out, you are able to converse with your customers and move on the result of that conversation. This is what our retailer did with their new conversation. They had scheduled a meeting with a large brick and mortar based distributor, that already carried some of their products in some of their stores. The purpose of this meeting was to persuade the distributor to put more product into more stores. In order to do this you need data, 24 hours before the meeting with the distributor our client put a message out to it's social network asking questions about what they wanted to see on the shelves of the stores they frequent. They also asked their network what they were most interested in this season. Within 8.00 hours they received thousands of responses. If you have been in any sort of business for more than 10 years you are thinking to yourself right now, just how long it would normally take to hear back from a thousand of your customers.

So 24 hours later our client took this recently gathered information they had obtained for free from their current customers, and showed the distributor what the customers wanted, where they wanted to see it and what's hot this season. The result of this meeting was a distributor that wants to place more of our retail client's product in up to 8,000 new retail outlets throughout the US.

So what's the morale of this story? The results and the return are not always where you think they are. A Social Media Campaign launched 90 days ago, provided specific data from a current customer base that allowed a retailer to show a current distribution channel exactly what the consumer base wanted, which resulted in a massive increase in distribution for the retailer. SearchRankings.Net is currently working on a new Social Media Jump Start kit and it will be available in the first quarter 2010.

If you are interested in a custom quote on the soon to be released Social Media Jump Start Kit, please contact us.