The relationship between social media and search has truly intensified over the past 12months. Both mediums are complimentary of each other. Virtually everything you do online socially impacts what you do for search and vice versa. You need to measure and understand both mediums to get the full benefit. For example, if your social campaign is creating a lot of noise, this could impact how much traffic your PPC campaigns generate, subsequently you would need to adjust bids.
With the inclusion of real-time results in search engines, you can see why a social media campaign would need to be understood as users directly searching for your brand may stumble upon the real-time result describing your social status.
One would wonder whether search is becoming more social and vice versa, but both have coexisted since the dawn of the internet so neither really have an edge over each other.
For those unsure, or still unsold on actually how beneficial social media can be for marketing – it must be noted that social media can be employed to dictate search strategies. If you know what your goal of your search campaign is, you could use social media to influence or dictate the outcome.
For example, if you wanted to increase the volume of links to your website, your social media campaign goal could be focussed towards that – links often play an important role in search strategies hence it could benefit your search campaign.
Furthermore, the measurement of social media can be achieved in numerous ways. If you distinguish your goals, measurement is naturally easier!
At the onset of measuring any campaigns results it is recommended that you always refer to the overall digital goals i.e. traffic, sales etc regardless of your social goals to see how they are impacted. You may find that what you thought your goal was, wasn’t – other metrics you measure may be impacted, thus the campaign could still be a success.
Social media and search will continue to grow; search leverages social media and vice versa. Until we have a day where neither search engines or social platforms exist, this will always be the case.
Perhaps future trends will see social activity being carried out on platforms controlled and managed by brands as opposed to external solitude platforms such as Facebook? While Facebook etc have the means to support social activity, as social activity increases, the need for more will arise and if social platforms do not offer more customisation, people and brands will use them less often.
February 19, 2010
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