Most brands have a meaningful presence on social media, yet challenges remain. New and evolving social media platforms continually challenge marketers to stay relevant. Beyond the “Big 6” social platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn), other platforms have gained relevance in recent years, including TikTok, Snapchat, Medium and WhatsApp. To further complicate matters, additional platforms are expected to gain notoriety in 2021: Twitch, Steemit, Reddit, Goodreads and Vero. Brands can feel overwhelmed by the dynamic social media landscape and look to outsource management responsibilities to agencies, which can create significant issues.

The recent Walmart tweet kerfuffle with Senator Hawley is a keen reminder of the impact a single Tweet can have on a brand. While the “mistake” was likely the result of an internal team member’s oversight, it could have just as easily been a third-party social media agency’s error. As valiant an effort as Walmart’s social team made, it did not dethrone the most famous example of outsourced social media ineptitude performed by NMS, Chrysler’s former social media marketing agency. On March 9th, 2011, an employee of NMS, Chrysler’s outsourced social media marketing agency, sent a highly offensive tweet that insulted Detroit drivers. For details, see the AdAge article, “What Lurks Behind Chrysler’s F-bomb? Social-Media Turf War.” Although it was deleted nearly instantly, the effects were lasting: the NMS employee was immediately fired, and shortly thereafter, Chrysler fired the agency. Both organizations received black eyes, which leaves many brands and agencies wondering if they are next. Not me.

As a career digital marketing veteran of 9 agencies, I’ve instilled in our collective corporate cultures the concept of transparency, honesty and integrity. At Anvil Media, client education and training is core to our values and purpose. As such, we’ve built our social media marketing practice around the concept of developing and implementing an overall social media strategy that empowers employees within the brand to manage its presence in social media. This approach addresses and alleviates many of the issues exemplified by the Chrysler and Walmart Twitter incidents.

While a vast majority of brands have developed a meaningful presence across social media platforms, many still struggle to consistently create compelling content and engage followers. In short, the challenge of determining the “who” and the “how” of a truly engaging social presence. While our approach of training and empowering in-house employees to manage social media is transparent, it does require an accepting corporate culture, discipline and a long-term commitment to be successful. For corporate marketers still considering outsourcing social media management, however, I’ve outlined 5 reasons not to outsource social media management.

Authenticity
I don’t think anyone can rightfully disagree that employees are in a much better position to truly represent a brand than an outside party (agency, consultant, etc.). The premise is simple but powerful: it is easier (and more transparent) to train existing employees how to represent a brand than train an agency on the nuances of a brand’s unique offerings, differentiators and culture. Due to relative transparency in social media, outsourced social marketers are often easy to spot, which can risk blow-back from brand enthusiasts.

Vested Interest
Nobody has a greater vested interest in the success of social media programs than employees of the brand itself. Essentially, an employee has one job and is committed to their success within the company. An outside agency, while motivated to please the client, employs account teams that typically have multiple clients. The difference may seem subtle, but if an agency loses a client, the account team may keep their jobs. As such, failure may be an option for some agency employees.

Control
If Chrysler had followed the best practices of other automakers (internal teams reviewing all outgoing messages), the offending tweet would have never gone out. While you could argue it was a process oversight, there is simply no replacement for the control when a brand manages a team in-house. Refer to Authenticity and Vested Interest for additional justification.

Empowerment
Keeping employees engaged and motivated can be challenging, particularly during tough economic conditions. Empowering employees to support social media initiatives can be a powerful alternative to financial challenging increases in benefits and compensation. Rewarding and recognizing socially-savvy employees who create success can also convince other naysayers to become believers.

Professional Development
Whether an employee is responsible for R&D, sales, customer service or marketing, training them to become socially savvy can reap dividends. As the employees build their expertise with social media, the likelihood they can identify opportunities and challenges increases dramatically. Since social media is the world’s largest focus group, where do you think the next big idea is most likely to originate, in house or online?

Getting Started
Regardless of who develops the initial social media strategy, it must incorporate essential elements to maximize success: detailed industry research, strategic planning, process, tools training and measurement. To minimize risk, programs should start small and iterate rapidly based on feedback and success metrics. Based on experience, brands often see tremendous benefit from looking for social media expertise outside the walls (yes, agencies and consultants) to both expedite the learning curve and implementation timeline. I’m biased, of course, in saying that Anvil is an excellent resources for social media training, but please make sure to incorporate internal talent into your long-term social media strategy in 2021 and beyond.

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Advertising: Amazon Will Eat Google and Facebook’s Lunch
You may be aware that many product searches start on Amazon. Amazon, smart agencies and brands are already well-aware (that includes Anvil of course). What we see changing most in 2020 is Amazon’s ability to improve its advertising options for brands and sellers alike, especially in the voice search realm (we’ve been wrong about this in the past, but we really feel it this year!). Amazon Advertising is one of the few high growth areas of its business lines and will make greater strides in 2020, taking more market share from Google and even Facebook. Make sure you have an Amazon marketing strategy for your product business in 2020 or get left in the dust.

Display Ads: Animated GIFs, Video and Interactivity will Replace Image Ads
Static image ads on social platforms will start to fall away and videos, animated GIFs and interactive ads will supplant the 25-year-old ad format on popular platforms like Google and Facebook. This trend is already starting to occur, with video becoming increasingly prevalent. The reason is obvious: interactive and motion-oriented ad formats are more engaging, memorable and tend to convert better. While static imagery is still a majority of ad format inventory, that will change by the end of 2020. Brands and agencies designing ads in animated, interactive and video formats will take a leadership role and stand out in a crowded marketplace.

SEO: Structured Data Strategy will be More Important than Ever Before
In 2019, “0” or ‘no-click’ searches surpassed regular clicks on organic and paid links in search results. As a result, brands will need to become intimate with structured data, most commonly powered by schema markup. As more searches move to mobile devices, users are not scrolling down the page, as they expect the first result they see to answer their query. Similarly, with voice search, users expect the first search result to be the best answer to their query. Marking up content with multiple types of structured data to secure the featured snippet real estate will be more important than ever. Sites who do not take advantage of structured data will see their site slip down the results page and will ultimately lose traffic to competitors with strong structured markup strategies. Google wants to be able to provide an answer to a user query as fast as possible, and with structured data on a page Google can more easily understand and compartmentalize the information on you site. With that better understanding, Google will be able and more likely to serve your content as a result when it is applicable to a query. Routinely making sure the structured data implemented on your site is error-free and up-to-date should be a required part of every ongoing SEO strategy.

SEO: Google Will Mandate That All Websites Be Voice Search Compliant
Anticipating the continued proliferation of smart speakers and digital voice assistants through 2020, Google will proactively mandate that all websites be voice search compliant by the end of 2020. Currently, over 40 percent of searches are voice-activated and that will continue to increase, likely becoming most searches by 2021. Website copy and content will have to be voice search friendly to rank well in Google searches. Brands will need to utilize structured data (aka schema markup or rich snippets) to power the ‘best answer’ on smart speakers or position 0 on screens. Site structure and content will also need to be altered to better answer questions commonly asked via voice assistants and smart speakers. Websites that lack structured data will be penalized by Google. This prediction expands on the previous structured data trend.

SEO: Augmented Reality Will Play a Bigger Role
Imagine virtually trying out clothes from your favorite brands without leaving your home. Augmented Reality (AR) can make this a reality. AR provides brands an opportunity to overlay information in video, text, or image format onto everyday surroundings, objects and real-world locations. Nearly 80 percent of the information the brain takes in is visual. By providing information in a visual medium, that also has the spatial nature of augmented reality, brands are giving the brain a very intuitive way of accessing and understanding information. ECommerce will benefit the most from AR implementation, as will destinations, automotive and other complex sales. Brands like adidas and Converse have already implemented AR, earning higher conversion rates with fewer product returns.

Email Marketing: The Flywheel Will Displace the Traditional Sales Funnel
More companies will be moving away from the traditional sales/marketing ‘funnel’ to the Flywheel model in 2020 in order to focus on creating experiences that engage and empower customers. Originally created in 1898, the AIDA (Awareness/Interest/Desire/Action) funnel model is a linear approach that focuses on attracting new customers and engaging them in a business or service to turn them into a quantifiable lead. The flywheel approach takes an innovative view of the buyer journey and uses all client-facing roles such as customer service, marketing, and sales to interact with customers at every stage. Attracting, engaging, and delighting customers even past the point of purchase – so companies continue to interact with customers instead of treating them as one-time-only prospects. The customer is the lynchpin, with the flywheel itself divided into three equal segments, each representing stages along the customer journey: attract, engage, and delight. Each area creates energy and passes it along to the next, with the delight phase feeding back into attract. Note: Anvil was not paid by HubSpot to endorse its model, we just agree with the methodology and hope for greater awareness and adoption.

Email Marketing: Push Notifications Will Replace Email
Email is going the way of the dinosaur, maybe not next year, but in the coming years. Starting in 2020, however, there will be a notable shift to push notifications and chatbots as viable replacements, especially for brands targeting Gen Y/Z, consumers and retail environments. Push notifications are alert style messages that can be sent to a user via desktop or mobile web, depending on context. At least twice as many people today sign up for web push notifications, compared to newsletter registrations. Only the top 10 percent of the email marketers can achieve a newsletter sign-up rate that matches the performance of push notifications. The average time that passes before the recipient opens a newsletter is 6.4 hours. With push notifications, the recipient will see the message immediately. The updates to the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) and stricter filters have dented the potency of email marketing, which will be further compromised by the CCPA legislation. As alluded to earlier, younger, digital-native audiences favor fewer touchpoints and other methods of communication than email, when engaging brands.

Social Media: Performance Metrics Will Replace ‘Likes’
Those following social media closely are likely familiar with Instagram’s recent decision to hide “Likes” from followers. With the proposed change, only account owners and select third-party platforms will have access to that data. While influencers and marketers alike have voiced concerns about the change, it does provide an opportunity for everyone to be smarter about social media strategies, especially evaluating influencer marketing programs. For example, influencers will need to up their game to become more professional about how they represent their potential impact, focusing on reach and engagement rates over Likes. This trend will also push brands to adopt performance models based on transactional goals. The social platforms, especially Instagram and Pinterest, are making buying product easier than ever, so the timing is ripe for change.

Social Media: Consumers will Drive Alignment and Transparency in Influencer Marketing
Moving forward, look for brands and influencers to create better alignment and transparency. According to research, 84 percent of consumers believe authenticity is important when choosing influencers to follow. More compelling: only 11 percent of influencers are CMA and FTC-compliant when disclosing relationships with sponsoring brands. Millennials are increasingly skeptical of businesses’ motives and impact on society, according to Deloitte. As a result, brands looking to target Gens X, Y and Z will need to be more intentional about how they select and engage influencers based on core values and fit vs reach. Another trend that will go together with transparency and alignment is a shift to “always-on” instead of project-based influencer campaigns. The writing is on the wall for brands and agencies, especially for brands targeting younger consumers, to plan accordingly.

Social Media: TikTok Will Lose Momentum – Relegating It to a Snapchat Knockoff
While we’ve seen a good deal of hype and momentum built around TikTok this year, marketers are still trying to figure out how they can use it to their advantage. It is true that TikTok saw incredible growth this year (over 500 million active users in Fall 2019), which earned it the title “social platform of 2019.” But’s also true that signups are coming to a near grinding halt. As a result, parallels can be made with Snapchat’s adoption history – incredible growth, everyone joins, signups slow, users leave/become less engaged. We believe TikTok will figure out how to utilize ads more effectively in 2020, but we don’t think user engagement will sustain and the platform will end up in the same purgatory as Snapchat. It will become an afterthought as brands evaluate platforms on which to target and invest. The one exception to this prediction, is if you’re looking to reach a very, very broad audience within a certain *cough* young demographic (and China as a growth marketplace).

We hope to get good grades when we review our 2020 digital marketing predictions at the end of the year. Let us know what you think of our 2020 digital marketing trends in the comments section or add your own predictions. May your 2020 be full of fulfilled predictions!

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Think Multimedia
I’ve long been a fan of video as a social media format and channel. In my first article on video marketing on YouTube in 2012, I evangelized the power of video as a storytelling medium. Here are just a few reasons why your YouTube channel should be a higher priority:

• 33 percent of internet users are active YouTube users, which equates to 1 billion people
• Videos are 5x more engaging than the written word.
• 90 percent of consumers believe that videos are helpful in the decision-making process.
• According to Aberdeen Group, video marketers get 66 percent more qualified leads per year and achieve a 54 percent increase in brand awareness.

More importantly, search engines and social media platforms love interactive multimedia like video and weigh it accordingly. Websites and pages with embedded video tend to rank better than those that don’t. Video also generates better reach and engagement than text or images. Since most marketers are strapped for cash and resources, video also has the benefit of being the highest life form online. A single 2-minute HD video creates not just 2 minutes of video, but 2 minutes of audio, thousands of high-resolution images and can be transcribed into text for blog posts or articles. Related article: Creating and Optimizing Videos for the YouTube Sales Funnel.

Develop Content via Research
One question I used to get in the early days of social, and is still quietly whispered today in planning meetings, is “what type of content should we put out on social media?” Interestingly, this question has come from global brands, not just smaller startups or SMBs. While most brands have figured out a content strategy and calendar, many brands have failed to fully-leverage budgets, creative assets and people to create maximum reach and engagement. Regardless of your level of sophistication, a well-informed content strategy is in order.

When building out a content strategy, I recommend starting with foundational research. Benchmark your competitors and industry players, including publications. Identify trends and gaps in the content. For additional insights, review content comments, ratings and reviews. This is particularly true with videos and podcasts. Reach metrics like subscribers or engagement metrics like shares are also helpful. Consumers are happy to tell you (and your competitors) what type of content theme, format and frequency is ideal. Listen. I also recommend asking employees, partners, customers and prospects what they would like to see from you. Most likely, the content will need to be useful, inspired and empathetic.

Tell Your Story
As the adage goes, “facts tell, stories sell.” Far too often, brands, particularly business-to-business companies, lean on facts and figures, which ignore the truth that all purchases are emotional at some level. People want to connect and crave meaning, so tell your story via social media and foster that connection. The Internet is your canvas, so become a painter. To scale, look beyond your junior-level social media manager and tap employees, customers and partners for unique, authentic and compelling content. Consumers prefer to hear about your brand from real customers, so foster that connection. While videos (interviews, how-to’s, etc.) are always safe, don’t underestimate the power of audio, imagery and text (mix it up!). Explore animation, celebrity endorsements or even micro-influencers. Be thoughtful in your approach to the latter, as there are legal and ethical obligations.

Share Positive Experience
As I’ve alluded above, stories sell, especially third-party endorsements. Harvest happy customers by encouraging them to post reviews on popular third-party sites like Google My Business and Yelp. Do the same with happy employees on sites like Glassdoor and Indeed. According to research, brands can increase customer advocacy by up to 25 percent by replying to a review or decrease advocacy by up to 50 percent by not replying. Don’t be on the wrong side of that statistic by regularly monitoring and engaging with those that post reviews, questions and complaints. Most importantly, build reviews and ratings into your process and culture. If a waiter receives a 20 percent tip, they should recognize the opportunity to request a review from that patron. Related article: How to Respond to Online Reviews: Best Practices.

Create a Rhythm
Consistency is essential, when it comes to creating a meaningful and effective social media presence. The ideal post frequency maximizes the opportunity to stay top-of-mind with constituents, without annoying them. We recommend a daily minimum posting cadence with popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Some platforms, especially Twitter, beg for a higher volume of daily posts while others like YouTube are difficult to maintain at even a 2x monthly cadence. The best way to develop a proper post cadence is to monitor reach and engagement metrics across each platform on a daily and weekly basis. Increase or decrease frequency, tweak topics and optimization strategies until a new baseline is created, then refine further.

An editorial calendar helps plan and visualize the editorial strategy for the forthcoming months. By using data to plan topics and content formats, brands can efficiently scale and plan content creation efforts. Use a shared calendar, Excel spreadsheet, Hootsuite or a Sprout Social scheduling calendar to map out ongoing content development efforts across the organization with details, including: Content title, Subject, Topic, Content type, Image/s, Deadline and Owner. Related article: How to Become a Social Media Guru in 3 Easy Steps.

Recycle and Syndicate Video
In an ideal world, 80 percent of your organic social media content would be unique and fresh. Unfortunately, most brands aren’t able or willing to dedicate a content team towards this end. More commonly, brands are creating 20 percent original content and sharing other valuable and relevant third-party content 80 percent of the time. One way to maximize your original organic content ratio is by recycling and syndicating content through each channel based on platform capabilities, target audiences and preferences. Per the previous example above and chart below, a single 2-minute video can be repurposed a myriad of ways: a 1-minute version of the video can be posts on Facebook, a 30 second version posted to Instagram and even shorter snippets to Snapchat or WhatsApp. The audio can be stripped out and syndicated as a podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. A summary post of the video or related content could be published on your company blog and promoted via posts on Twitter and LinkedIn. The possibilities are endless.

Explore Live Streaming & Podcasting
Live streaming video is relatively new, at least from a consumer-use perspective. In 2013, Google’s introduced YouTube Live streaming platform to the public. Periscope made it as easy as a single click, and Facebook joined the fray. Now there are a host of video live streaming features in existing platforms for brands to choose from including Twitter, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Instagram and Vimeo. Live streaming provides an easy way for brands to engage with fans in real-time and have a one-to-many conversation. The trick to building an effective live streaming program is to build a subscriber-base, so you can launch each new broadcast with a baseline of fans and build momentum virally. An alternative approach is live podcasting (audio stream only) or pre-taped podcasts. Podcasts are more affordable and easier to record and produce and, in some ways, have less competition (for ears vs eyeballs) than video. Related article: How to Extend Your Brand by Building a Podcast Strategy.

Leverage Advertising
I’ve always been partial to organic content as a driver of awareness and thought-leadership. That said, advertising can play a critical and effective role at generating awareness, credibility and lead flow. Currently, social media platforms offer robust targeting options based on profile information, behavior and interests. Each platform provides different ad products, audiences and targeting features. For example, Facebook offers the most robust targeting options, at the expense of user privacy. Facebook also owns & controls Instagram advertising within the same ad platform. LinkedIn is the most robust for B2B audiences, with more than a dozen targeting options, including interests. I’m not a fan of Twitter in general or as an ad platform, but it can be useful for specific audiences and campaigns. Google offers access to 90 percent of the websites on the internet via the Display Network, including YouTube. Other platforms provide options relevant to various industries and products, including Pinterest & Snapchat and may be worth testing.

Think Ahead: Test New Platforms
When I first started my career in digital marketing in 1996, social media consisted of bulletin boards and chat rooms. The early players in the social graph included Six Degrees, Friendster and MySpace. My, have times changed, even for the big players. Google+ failed to compete with Facebook, Microsoft had to buy its way into the market by acquiring LinkedIn. Regardless, there are many platforms worth testing and revisiting. Tik Tok out of China just surpassed 1 billion installs (with 600 million active users). If your audiences are Gen Z and global consumers, check it out. Don’t forget the older, more established but likely under-utilized platforms like StumbleUpon and SlideShare. Lastly, check out Reddit, Snapchat and WhatsApp for unique brand engagement opportunities.

Listen to Timeless Advice
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Self-improvement guru, Dale Carnegie, outlined his timeless advice in 1936, and I’ve found his ten rules of engagement work perfectly for social media:
1. Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain.
2. Give honest and sincere appreciation.
3. Arouse in the other person an eager want.
4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
5. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
6. Show respect for the other person’s opinions.
7. Never say “You’re Wrong.”
8. If you’re wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
9. Dramatize your ideas.
10. Throw down a challenge.

I hope you’ve found value and inspiration from my ten social media strategies. Feel free to add your own strategies and tips for a more successful social media presence in the comments section below.

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In their quest for the most useful search result, Google’s algorithm has placed increasing weight on social media signals including citations, likes, comments, and shares. Brands that have hesitated to enter the social media fracas have paid a price in terms of organic search rankings. Conversely, brands who embraced social early have benefitted from the additional boost in visibility. The integration of social media tactics into search engine optimization (SEO) efforts can maximize the impact of those efforts on brand visibility, credibility, and sales. The following seven steps will ensure an optimal organic search engine presence.

Step 1: Claim & Optimize Social Profiles
The first and most important step in improving your organic search visibility via social media is to ensure you’ve created profiles on the top platforms. It only takes a few minutes to claim a profile on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google+, Instagram, and Pinterest. Be sure to secure your brand name as your handle, as it typically becomes the URL and is your best performing keyword in search results. Make sure to incorporate relevant industry keywords into your biography and status updates to boost non-branded search visibility. If you only have time to claim one profile, make sure it is Google+, as there is no such thing as SEO on Google without a Google+ company profile.

Step 2: Listen, Learn & Apply
In case you haven’t yet figured it out, social media is the world’s largest focus group. Every day, millions of people publish their thoughts, opinions, and insights about your company, competitors, and industry. Analyzing keywords and phrases posted on social media provides insights into future content opportunities for SEO. When you have insights into current trends, you can create unique, timely, and compelling content for your website, blog, and social profiles. Utilize Google, social platform search, and related tools (like FollowerWonk) to identify industry influencers and leverage your content to engage target constituents. The goal: seek the Share, which is the most powerful vote of confidence regarding the quality of your content and credibility of your website.

Step 3: Integrate with Website
In order to maximize the value of your investment in social media, it is important to close the loop between your social profiles and website. The first step is to embed links to your primary social media profiles into your website (ideally at the header or footer of your template, so that they appear on every page for optimal visibility). This will tell Google and site visitors that you have a social media presence worth visiting. The second step is to embed social sharing buttons (again, ideally on every page) so that visitors can easily share your content via their social media profiles without having to navigate away and lose their browsing momentum. I mentioned leveraging the power of the share, and this is the easiest way to facilitate that sharing. The third step is to integrate feeds from your social profiles into your website (ideally the home page). This is a great way to keep your website content fresh and interesting to users and search engines. Utilizing tools like Postano will aid in content syndication, curation, and measurement of engagement. Last but not least, consider syndicating customer reviews from third-party websites on your own website. Review sites are often highly visible and respected, and offer critical third-party validation. Martin Hospitality on the Oregon Coast incorporates reviews from TripAdvisor and other platforms into their websites to boost credibility.

Step 4: Develop Winning Content
Content has always been King. There is no such thing as a social media or SEO strategy without content. Leverage the research performed in Step 2 to create shareable content. Google loves multimedia, so think about a multi-dimensional media content strategy. The most efficient approach to content creation is to start with HD video, as one 60-second recording can be repurposed to YouTube, Vimeo, and Facebook, and edited down for Instagram (15 seconds) and Vine (6 seconds). That same HD video also provides more than 1 million still images (for Pinterest and Instagram), and 60 seconds of audio (for iTunes), and can also be transcribed into text for a blog post or an article. Post and syndicate the content on your website and across your social media profiles for maximum reach and engagement.

Step 5: Go Local, Mobile & Social with Search
According to Search Engine Watch, 50 percent of mobile searches have local intent and 61 percent of those mobile searches result in a purchase. As such, mobile search and social cannot be ignored, especially by retail brands. The first step in creating a meaningful local presence is to claim and optimize your local listings on search engines, directories, and review sites. Google and Yelp are two of the most important platforms in this arena. Once claimed and populated with content, it is essential to monitor and update the listings regularly, as freshness is important. Be sure to optimize your website for local search as well, utilizing Schema.org Local Business markup and Google Maps for driving directions.

Step 6: Monitor Social Mentions & Citations
Among the primary signals influencing search rankings are mentions of your brand in social media. Even if all mentions of your brand are positive (which is unlikely), it is essential to monitor social conversations. Quickly address negative reviews and be sure to celebrate and syndicate positive reviews. Engage constituents in conversation to build rapport and trust. Ask and answer questions about your brand or industry and encourage offline-to-online engagement where possible, including encouraging happy customers to post reviews based on their recent experience. This content will all be factored into your rankings. For bonus points, incorporate positive reviews into your paid advertising and offline marketing.

Step 7: Measure & Optimize
What gets measured gets managed, as my old boss used to say. In order to get the most out of your search and social marketing efforts, it is essential to continuously measure and optimize. While there are limitless ways to measure the impact of social media on your search visibility, there are a few primary metrics on which to focus. The first set of metrics relates to the impact of your presence in social media, and includes shares, comments, and brand or website mentions (aka citations). The higher the numbers, the more credible your social presence and the greater the likelihood that they will positively impact search rankings. The second set of metrics, which are further down the funnel, relate to the impact of social media on your website. These metrics include level of visibility in targeted search rankings, the associated traffic to your website, and any resulting leads or sales (which require conversion tracking in your analytics to properly measure). Last but not least, it is worthwhile to measure overall sentiment and related qualitative metrics, which are likely to impact site traffic, rankings and sales. Regularly tweak your content based on insights from analytics to maximize your rankings.

Due to recent changes in consumer behavior, social media will continue to impact search engine rankings and SEO strategy. By integrating social media with your search marketing efforts, you will see a measurable and positive impact on your rankings, traffic and ultimately, sales. Follow the seven steps outlined above and see a return on your marketing investment in the coming year, before your competitors figure it out.

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CMD has been a front runner in developing best practices for how to incorporate social media and search within PR efforts for its clients, such as Cisco Systems, NW Natural, Intel and JELD-WEN, inc. In fact, the agency’s PR group recently changed its name to CMD’s earned media group, which better reflects CMD’s philosophy that generating exposure and building a reputation in today’s increasingly digital world requires seamlessly incorporating creative PR, search and social media solutions.

“For the past few years, we’ve been focused not only on traditional PR efforts, but the best ways to deliver news directly to end audiences via the latest digital channels they’re using,” said Darcie Meihoff, APR, CMD managing director/earned media. “It’s great to work together with an organization like SEMpdx, which is recognized as a leader in promoting and advancing the best thinking in the field of search.”

The collaboration between SEMpdx and CMD will expand the reach of both organizations and increase educational opportunities for local professionals in order to help to build Portland’s reputation as the leader in the areas of search and social media.

To find out more about CMD, please visit www.cmdagency.com and follow @CMDPortland on Twitter.

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Since I first attended SES in Boston, I’ve noticed the event has changed along with the industry. For starters, the overall energy level has waned as the SES appeals to a more broad and corporate audience. Back in the early days, you could sense the nervous energy and appreciated the “insider information” now outlawed by legal departments.

On the flip side, the content has evolved to a more strategic level, which I appreciate as a business owner. There are certainly more opportunities for hand-on training through SEMPO Institute and Search Engine Academy that take some of the burden off of SES. The parties continue to impress, however.

While they may not be quite as edgy and wild as in the past, the boys at Webmaster Radio surely know how to throw a SearchBash. The presenters are consistently better than in the past, yet I’m still surprised that some were truly rusty and tended to be overly self-promotional on occasion. But we search marketing professionals don’t attend SES for the parties or presenters as much as we do for the content and networking.

Unfortunately for me, I was so busy blogging and keeping things running at Anvil Media, that I wasn’t able to partake in much of the networking opportunities (lunches and some parties). That said, I was able to take away a few nuggets from the content, which I’ll summarize for those that don’t have the time to read my blog posts.

Based on a non-scientific analysis of session attendance and overheard conversations, I believe the hottest single topic was social media (including platforms, monitoring and measurement tools, optimization techniques, link development and reputation management strategies). Secondarily, I there was a bit of buzz about local and mobile search, but it’s still so early in the game that the following is still relatively small.

Perhaps the most inspirational session was Andrew Tomkins keynote this morning about the future of search. Essentially, the Chief Scientist at Yahoo! Research outlined a new abstract-based approach to search results that I found intuitive, powerful and inspiring. We’ll see if my judgment amounts to much, however. All-in-all, an educational event with a touch of inspiration.

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