How to Optimize your Paid Search with Social Media
Paul Dunay is an award-winning B2B marketing expert with more than 20 years’ success in generating demand and creating awareness for leading technology, consumer products, financial services and professional services organizations.
Paul is the global vice president of marketing for Maxymiser a leading web optimization firm, and author of four “Dummies” books: Facebook Marketing for Dummies (Wiley 2009), Social Media and the Contact Center for Dummies (Wiley Custom Publishing 2010), Facebook Advertising for Dummies (Wiley 2010) and Facebook Marketing for Dummies 2nd Edition (Wiley 2011).
His unique approach to marketing has led to recognition of Paul as a BtoB Magazine Top 25 B2B Marketer of the Year for 2010 and 2009 and winner of the DemandGen Award for Utilizing Marketing Automation to Fuel Corporate Growth in 2008. He is also a finalist for the last six years in a row in the Marketing Excellence Awards competition of the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA), and is a 2010 and 2005 gold award winner in Driving Demand.
Buzz Marketing for Technology, Paul’s blog, has been recognized as a Top 20 Marketing Blog for 2009 and 2008, a Top Blog to Watch for 2009 and 2008, and an Advertising Age Power 150 blog in the “Daily Ranking of Marketing Blogs.”
Paul has shared his marketing thought leadership as a featured speaker for the American Marketing Association, BtoB Magazine, CMO Club, MarketingProfs, Marketing Sherpa, Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG), and ITSMA. He has appeared on Fox News, and his articles have been featured in BusinessWeek, The New York Times, BtoB Magazine, MarketingProfs and MarketingSherpa.
Paul holds an Executive Certificate in Strategy and Innovation from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a bachelor’s degree in Marketing and Computer Science from Ithaca College.
Social media can also give you great ideas for words that you may never have even thought of before. By looking at words that people are using in social media in conjunction with your topic you can get great ideas on the words people use to describe your brand or your industry and then optimize around those words.
Cheers,
Sheldon, community manager for Sysomos
@Sheldon – Agreed and they can be very insightful too!
I agree with the fact that social media can help glean information when doing keyword research, but I have two points of contention/caution.
1.) I disagree that “consumers today don’t search with long phrases.” With the amount of internet content created over the last 5 years, the relevancy of search results has been challenged. Mixing in things like social and local often times gives the avg user less options to choose from. Search engine users over that last several years have moved to longer and longer tail keywords to increase the likelihood of that top result being exactly what they are looking for. The roll-out of Google Instant increased this by suggesting those longer terms to people who may not have typed them on their own.
2.) You have to take social keyword data with a grain of salt. It may give you clues as to themes in your hierarchy of search, but it may also lead you to more broad, short-tail keywords that are less likely to convert. People tend to abbreviate or use different terms in social than they may in search due to a limitation of characters in a tweet for instance. That broad term will be more competitive and cost more than a long-tail term that you can keyword target for someone further into the purchasing lifecycle, i.e. “[product slang]” vs. “[full product name] on sale.” That longer term is more likely to convert and give you better bang for your buck, but now we are talking conversion optimization.
@JT – Sorry I couldnt get right back to you yesterday – I was at a trade show and wanted to consider your comment rather than making a quick reply
So …
1) I think we are saying the same thing here which is because of social consumers need to search with longer phrases to get to the optimal result. Social is gumming up the shorter phrases. My point is they dont naturally start with a long phrase (observing my wife and kids) they start short and go long to get to the result (which is a shift we are all having to learn! – special thanks to Google Instant as you mentioned)
2) on the Social keyword side – more point was more along the lines of “whats trending about your brand” in social – this is something you cant get from Google since the act of searching pre-disposes you to the answer!
Great comment and thanks for sharing your insights!