Search and Social Synergy

November 13, 2008 – 5:52 pm

MODERATOR:
Dana Todd, CMO, Newsforce, Inc.

PANELISTS:
Mike Grehan, Global KDM Officer, Acronym Media
Adam Lavelle, Chief Strategy Officer, iCrossing
Julie Sun, Senior Manager, SEO, MTV Digital Media
Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, SearchEngineLand.com

Here is a quick overview of each speaker and their major points.

Danny Sullivan:

  • Honestly, I didn’t take notes for Danny’s presentation because he said the whole thing would be blogged the next day on Search Engine Land. Well, I couldn’t ever find it. If you can, can you post the link in the comments or email me?

Julie Sun:

  • The Digg community doesn’t typically like big brands (in fact, there can be some ugly backlash if the brand isn’t fully transparent). But is a great place to read feedback. Example:MTV launched a new video site, and some of the immediate feedback was along the lines of, “Oh great. Another video site that doesn’t work outside the US.” In actuality, the site worked just fine outside of the US, and after addressing the issues that led to the problem in the first place, this issue was nipped in the bud.
  • Julie pointed out a potential flaw and/or exploit on Facebook. She said that when you do a Facebook search, the first results page will be whichever one was created first (pizza example). is this true? Does anybody know for sure?
  • Facebook recently opened up their pages (not profile pages) to crawling, so we’ll probably be seeing them show up on the SE’s SERPs more often.
  • Use Yahoo! Answers to get a #1 ranking before your site even launches. I liked this one. Everyone knows that Yahoo! Answers is one big SEO racket, but why not use it as a surrogate for your brand until your site goes live? Good stuff.
  • Don’t blindly jump into a social media marketing campaign just because you have a good idea. Make sure that you have the proper resources before starting. No sense in starting something potentially great that you will have to abandon once it builds steam.
  • Know your goals beforehand. Are you branding? Are you looking for traffic?

Mike Grehan:
This presentation was all about the crossover between search and social media.

  • The communituies will drive the engines. This is the likely future of search.
  • Librarything.com is an excellent example of user-driven search. Check ou its tons of UGC.
  • Mike talked about an example of making a short video that he published to several different video hosting sites. He tagged it in such a way that it would compete with a moderately competetive term (he didn’t say which one). Within 3 days, several of the videos were ranking in the top 10 for that term. The point? Google is obviously listening, and HTML is not the future of content - nor is it what the search engines will eventually be prioritizing.
  • Textbook SEO will disappear completely (nothing new there).
  • DAO: Digital Asset Optimization. This is defines as offsite SEO using social media.
  • Mike claims that the number one source of Google’s information is their toolbar. He didn’t elaborate, but I’m curious to know why. Mike? Are you reading this?
  • He Quoted Andrew Tomkins who suggests that HTTP and HTML will become obsolete.

Adam Levelle:

  • If you think that you are in charge of your own brand, you are not. Eventually, nearly all information about any brand will be UGC. Most will be crap, so the SEs will be in charge of filtration.
  • Case study: The company was able to radically decrease negative sentiment by merely answering questions. Here is a great argument for getting involved. You don’t even have to initiate anything - just answer people’s questions.
  • Clive Thompson of Wired is quoted: “Google is not a search engine. Google is a reputation-management system.”
  • Measuring social media is still very difficult. One tactic that Adam tried was to track the links posted and clicks received via every different social media site on which they had activity. He mined the Omniture data in order to do this, and it was horribly tedious.
  • Measuring social media is not the same as ROI.

-Drew

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