Media Logic recently tweeted about this blog post How Social Marketing Lifts Organic Conversions. The post describes the impact social media may have on search engine optimization and vice versa, stating that marketers who engage in SEO and social media may have 58.8% higher conversion rates in organic traffic because their social media work has increased trust in their brands and products.  The breakdown of data provided in the post shows that SEO is more effective at attracting attention and ultimately converting people, while social media is more likely to increase positive thinking around a product and brand. Clearly, a social marketing strategy that includes both SEO and social media would be the best and most effective approach.

But more often than not, we see companies significantly concentrating on either SEO or social marketing… So how can they effectively integrate both in a strategic approach without expending twice the time and resources?  To help provide some direction, I decided to reach out to Media Logic colleague, Danny Dover, an influential SEO expert at SEOmoz, to determine a few key factors in developing an approach that effectively integrates search engine optimization and social media on a small scale.

After putting our heads together, we’ve come up with 4 critical success factors for an integrated approach to search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing:

#1: Listen and learn before jumping in

The biggest mistake we see companies that are new to integrating SEO and social media is starting before they know what they are doing.  There is a LOT of misinformation about SEO and social media online, and it is easy to hurt your potential rankings without even knowing it.  Our recommendation is to spend a considerable amount of time listening and reading before formulating your strategy.  A great place to start is the beginners guide to SEO and blogs like Search Engine Land, Logical Juice and some of the published social media whitepapers at mlinc.com.

#2: Test, test and test some more

Google says they update their algorithm roughly 400 times a year (this means more than once a day).  So companies need to be continually testing – including title tags, meta descriptions, content and linking strategies. Your best bet is to write good content and measure the results.

#3: Create useful, relevant content

Content is the key to earning links online.  People link to what they find useful or interesting.  This is important because link-related factors make up 70% of search engine ranking factors.  For us, SEO and social media always eventually comes back to people.  Content works because content is what people are online to consume.

#4: Be authentic

The importance of authenticity cannot be overstated. People are very good at detecting “marketing speak.” The surest way to get ahead online is to be real with people and do everything you can to deliver value.  Forget what you learned in your Business classes.  This is the Internet; people want to talk to people not faceless corporations. Look to Yelp, Zappos, JetBlue and Google as examples of companies that have done well with this.

Even small SEO and social media efforts in some niches can make a huge difference to the bottom line.  Businesses are made up of people who need information.  Search engines like Google, and social media platforms like Twitter are the best tools out there for finding information, so it is only natural that business relationships can happen online.  Other than improved rankings, traffic and conversions, the biggest benefit for any business owner is establishing new relationships with like-minded business owners and employees.  The Internet is the world’s biggest meeting place… All it takes to succeed is the ability to be found by other people.

The psychological profile of emerging adults is marked by “identity exploration, instability, self-focus, feeling in-between and a rather poetic characteristic [Arnett] calls ‘a sense of possibilities.’” Should this life stage be fully adopted by the professional and academic community, we may see policy changes in health care, education and social services sometime in our future, but there are real implications for marketers now.

As a result of this psychological profile, emerging adults “slouch toward adulthood at an uneven, highly individual pace.” For marketers, this means age alone can’t be used as a means to target. People in this age group reach traditional milestones at different times. “In 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men had, by the time they reached 30, passed all five milestones [completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child]. Among 30-year-olds in 2000, according to data from the United States Census Bureau, fewer than half of the women and one-third of the men had done so.”

As we noted in our paper, The impact of today’s financial crisis on Generation Y, published in early 2009, “the needs of a 25-year-old who is single living in NYC has vastly different needs from a married 25-year-old with a young child at home.”

Thankfully, today’s media options allow for more acute and accurate targeting based on psychographics. Furthermore, it provides greater credence to leverage social media when addressing this audience; as social media provides brands with the opportunity to curate, create and encourage user-generated content, which individuals can then share with who they believe, are the appropriate peers within their social circle. Ultimately, social media allows individuals to self select into brand communities they feel are most relevant.

Whether or not Arnett’s emerging adult movement takes root, marketers are likely to face continued challenges in finitely targeting those in the 18 to 30 age group. However, marketers are now armed with a mix of media to meet the challenge and deliver relevant brand experiences to their intended audience.

Related articles:

• We’re Not Immature, We’re “Emerging Adults” [Kids Today] (jezebel.com)
• Divergent Perspectives on Emerging Adulthood (psypress.com)

In addition to FOX, the contest is being promoted and sponsored by AppNation, the first global conference for application developers. It’s no coincidence that the subtitle for the conference is “Show Me the Money”, as independent app developers have long-struggled to truly cash in on the smartphone and i-app craze. This promo sponsorship provides the contest with the credibility it may need to overcome the building backlash against CGA; some feel CGA is just brands taking advantage of free efforts by others, with little investment or responsibility. Will this leap into the application development pool be different, at least for the first few brands that take advantage of its novelty.

CGA began it’s surge around 2007 with the now-famous Dorito’s Super Bowl contest, still going strong and with probably the best level of execution – it’s 2010 consumer-generated Super Bowl ads were ranked #1 by two Twitter surveys, in number of Tweets, TiVo replays and Hulu post-game views.  But it’s not a success story for everyone – Chevy Tahoe’s first and last foray into CGA ended up with a slew of negative videos that went viral, all positioning the vehicle as environmentally criminal. Others simply suffer from terrible execution, a la the Folger’s “Best Part of Waking Up” 2010 jingle contest, being held up as proof that CGA has truly jumped the shark. In 2007, AdAge pronounced consumers the “Agency of the Year”. Yet a recent AdAge article about CGA opened quite brutally with these words” “Dear consumer, your 15 minutes are over. You suck.”

FOX, never one to shy away from innovation or risk-taking, has high hopes for Pimp My App, and so far has enjoyed a backlash-free launch. Any search for “Pimp My App” brings up top app dev bloggers and other influencers touting the contest and driving traffic to both the FOX site and AppNation’s. We’ll soon see if app developer contests become a new vein in the crowd-sourcing movement, or if they, like FOX’s ill-fated Tweet-peats, come to a crashing halt amid cries of “foul”. In the meantime, let the pimping begin.

So, it’s no surprise that we were recently told, “We want some of that Old Spice Guy stuff,” no less than four times, in a recent meeting with a company looking for a b2b social media strategy to capture some OSG-type magic.

It’s no wonder that companies want to capture the stuff of Old Spice. This week, Adweek published results that Old Spice sales have been on a steady double-digit uptake since introduction of its bravado-steeped manly man TV campaign featuring Isaiah Mustafa; and in the last month, its social campaign pushed the sales increase into the three-digit zone.

Watching this campaign unfold and peeking behind the (shower) curtain at how it was pulled-off, we’d say that the success of the OSG campaign involved four key criteria:

• The breakthrough social campaign embraced, didn’t seek to reinvent, the heritage of the brand
• It pushed the envelope, taking a familiar persona to the next level, ever expanding opportunities to converse
• It delivered its audience and  its audience’s main influencer something to talk about
• It delivers on the promise of the brand

Old Spice Guy knows how to get on his horse and sell it. No difference there between consumer and b2b marketing. It all goes back to marketing basics — know what’s important to your customers, find out where they are talking about it, give them something relevant to talk about, and be able to communicate how your strengths map to what they want – in the time and places where they are talking.

Want some OSG magic? Find your horse and get on it … just be sure that you know how to ride it. And if you’re not sure where to find your horse or how to ride, maybe it’s time you speak with us.

How can this be? How can the most visited site on the Internet also be among the most despised?

The complaints against Facebook are familiar. There’s the well-founded privacy concerns, the confusing and repeated changes to the interface, the intrusive advertising and silly games. But these foibles amount to the quirky yet sometimes annoying traits of a creature we otherwise love. Facebook is like a beloved puppy that decides to munch on your new sandals for lunch, if you will. Facebook is the husband with a tendency to leave his sweaty gym socks on the bathroom floor. While these are not among our favorite traits, they aren’t enough to make us abandon puppy, hubby or social network for good.

Facebook has become an indispensible “social utility” to many people (approximately 500 million). A great achievement for Facebook but it’s hard to unconditionally love an entity that large and powerful. This is why the recent backlash is predictable, just as backlash is predictable against any “utility” of Facebook’s size. Perhaps the results of the ACSI survey only reinforce that fact that Facebook has become a permanent and essential part of life, just like cable TV and airline travel.

And while a “social utility” like Facebook clearly isn’t as important as say, the fresh water supply, it is a practical, efficient way to track down and connect with family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues and the like. Something this universally useful is not going to go away quickly, if ever, despite complaints about unsympathetic changes to privacy and user interface. Note the recent failure of Quit Facebook Day.

One could argue that Facebook has transcended “social media” and is now simply a regular, everyday part of life for people young and old, man and woman. It is for this reason that Facebook finds itself in the same boat as airlines, cable companies and the IRS, and why the (albeit sometimes tumultuous) relationship between Facebook and its users will continue to endure.

So many questions… But this much is clear: if there’s a company with the resources and talent to develop a real Facebook-killer, it’s Google. And given that social has proved to be the hardest nut for Google to crack, we have a few suggestions for those genius Google developers to consider if they are, in fact, building the next “super social platform”:

#1: Give it your best and seamlessly integrate Google’s greatest tools in Google Me

• Photo sharing – Allow users to easily upload photos to their Google Me profile via Picasa or previously established Web Albums
• Tap into Google’s renowned Search capabilities – utilize search in a more meaningful way by giving users deep, individualized results drawn both from the web and also within users’ personal networks… Searching on “New Zealand Vacations”? Results should include not just the typical tourism and travel agency sites, but also suggestions to contact friends and other personal network connections who’ve mentioned New Zealand in their profiles. Rich.

#2: Get granular for the gurus

• Analytics – give advertisers deep insight into traffic on their profiles or fan pages
• AdWords – provide advertisers with granular control over their audiences

#3: Play well with others and give users the ability to connect with their existing assets on other social networks. Allow users to quickly and easily import info, photos, notes, friends, etc. from their profiles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Flickr etc. With so many people already deeply invested elsewhere, Google Me should let users try something new without starting over.

#4: Create clique-ability and let users easily establish groups for a variety of purposes – work groups to collaborate and share documents, mommy groups to share photos and parenting resources, team sports clubs to share schedules and workouts, etc.

#5: Keep good design in mind – Dear Google: we are so over your “Leisure Suit Larry” era icons. If you want us to socialize with you, please invest in some fresh design. Thank you.

#6: Be concerned with privacy and make privacy profiles simple and understandable. We’d love to see the ability for users to set up multiple privacy “identities” for designated types of connections, such as colleagues, neighbors, dart buddies, college friends, etc.

#7: Put ‘mobile first’ and deliver equal or enhanced functionality for mobile. Make sure there’s seamless interaction between Android (and other mobile devices) and Google Me. We want to see anything that can be done on Google Me online being done on a phone/tablet and flawless sync between web and mobile.

Still, even with all these features, it will be a tough battle for any new social network to face-off with Facebook… And convince loyal users to make a switch.

What do you think? What features would you like to see on a social platform from Google? What would make it worth your while to change networks?

Related articles:

• More Fuel Added to Google Me Rumors (mashable.com)
• Google Me, Facebook Competitor, Confirmed by Former Facebook CTO (The Huffington Post)
• Google Me to be the Googlish answer to Facebook? (engadget.com)

Crowdsourcing philanthropy

The exclusively Facebook execution of  ”Chase Community Giving” last year (what Kimberly refers to as crowdsourcing), also ties in well with one of our recent blog posts, Four Metrics for Determining the Value of a Facebook Fan, as it relates to avoiding the misleading measure for successful social media marketing by imposing a monetary value on Facebook fans (“To effectively use social media as a marketing tool, marketers must be able to demonstrate the value that a follower base delivers to their clients”).

I’d bet Kimberly Davis would argue that even the possibility of driving financial business in the future captured immeasurable value, not to mention the unquantifiable value of demonstrating thought leadership by diving right in – “Others have stepped into the crowdsource space,” said Davis, “but they’ve done it very gingerly. They’ve put one toe in the water. We put our whole foot and leg.”

A passion to change and engage

Davis stepped into the role of president of the JPMorgan Chase Foundation in 2006, ready to cultivate a “futurist view” of philanthropy. She’s shifted the foundation’s portfolio from broad causes to more focused contributions to education and community development, which she hopes will eventually feed the financial business. And Chase Community Giving has certainly generated plenty of brand awareness among all those Facebook voters.

It was thrilling to read about Davis’ core passion; according to Invisible Children cofounder, Laren Poole:

…She showed up at 6 a.m. and talked to every single volunteer about what they did at the organization. It was so clear that she’s the heartbeat behind the whole thing. She got it in a way that I didn’t expect. “It,” of course, is how to connect corporate philanthropy efforts with a young generation more passionate about grassroots activism…

And this passion has helped her foster a very adventurous view of the new world we find ourselves in (at age 50 to boot). It was downright inspirational to hear someone saying out loud that we should be taking risks – especially from the president where “as a firm we’re in the business of managing risk”. Davis says, “Philanthropy is where we should be taking risks, but there were a lot of questions about the level of transparency needed to run this in an authentic way. Raising the blinds on the entire crowdsourcing process made a few bankers nervous…”

Staying transparent and authentic

In these times of general unrest over financial trust and leadership, Kimberly’s position on transparency and authenticity are not only important for maintaining engagement, but potentially has the power to be a first step in exponentially changing public impression. For me, Kimberly’s understanding of the power of “crowdsourcing”, or engagement leading directly to brand loyalty, is what conversation-centric marketing is all about. To be able to encourage activism on the scale Community Giving did… priceless.

Related articles:

• Feeding the Moral Hunger: Strategic Social Marketing for the Greater Good? (logicaljuice.com)
• The 100 Most Creative People in Business 2010 (fastcompany.com)
• Chase Community Giving Kicks Off Summer 2010 Program (eon.businesswire.com)

Without question, these efforts are in part attempts by banks and other financial institutions to generate some goodwill after being publicly flayed by consumers, the press, the federal government, state governments and on and on. But it is also related to what Katherine Fulton, president of the Monitor Institute, labels “Moral Hunger,” a nationwide uptick in empathy summed up this way by our own Paige Fleury:

What was a society of consumption, collection and live-for-today is now a more pragmatic, empathetic and forward-looking group whose behaviors ­from spending and saving to brand choice and outlook add up to a new moral hunger – a desire to do good.

But a question has been raised: Are the financial institutions that launch these cause-related marketing efforts being exploitative if they associate themselves with a cause for a fixed period of time to turn a profit? Constance Casey, the author of the Slate.com article concludes: if everyone wins, what’s the harm?

Sponsorships of course are as old as business itself. Companies and institutions have long given dollars to have their names attached to community events and good causes, or support and promote the volunteer efforts of their employees.

What has changed is the weight of cause marketing relative to an organization’s overall marketing budget? The AMEX Members Project is one of the company’s key marketing initiatives… The reason for the change can be summed up in two words: social media. And we think the answer to the question of whether a particular cause-related program is exploitative or not lies in its level of “sociability.”

Let’s compare the AMEX Members Project to the similar Pepsi Refresh Project.

(We can put aside the fact that the first is for a financial services company and the second for a consumer brand, as all these “projects” are intended to appeal to the general public.)

Both The AMEX Members Project and the Pepsi Refresh Project ask the public to submit suggestions for causes they feel should be funded. Proponents are encouraged to promote their causes through their own social media channels. The public is asked to vote. And the causes that get the most votes get a donation. But there is a subtle, and we think important, difference between these two initiatives.

The Pepsi Refresh Project simply sponsors a “cause marketplace.” It has set up categories. But critically, the content of that marketplace is entirely user-generated. The brand is there merely to manage the process. Pepsi doesn’t suggest, explicitly anyway, that it is like any of the causes it sponsors, only that it is like us in that it shares our “Moral Hunger.”

The AMEX Members Project on the other hand explicitly entangles the brand with the causes submitted to its website. AMEX’s kickoff video for example featured two causes promoted by individuals who just happened to be “cardmembers since …” Further, AMEX selects causes with “good optics” to feature on its Project home page.

Can we draw a line between these two initiatives? We think so.

Social media is driving cause-related marketing. But for social to be really social, the forum in which people socialize needs to be under their control, and not dominated by an individual or sponsoring institution. Otherwise, participants will begin to feel that they are not part of a cause, but instead part of “a crummy commercial.”

In social media, we may have found the goose that lays the golden egg. Hopefully us marketers won’t kill it by forcing it to lay more than it naturally can.

For ideas on how all this relates to financial service marketing, see Media Logic’s latest whitepaper, Fear not! How financial service institutions can put the “Big 6” social marketing strategies to work.

Media Logic’s latest whitepaper, Fear not! How financial service institutions can put the ‘Big 6’ social marketing strategies to work, suggests strategies, platforms, and control protocols for how financial service institutions and other regulated businesses can begin to step into social marketing without fear.

DOWNLOAD THE WHITEPAPER

Fear not! is based on web-based reconnaissance of the social media efforts of 35 American financial institutions in March 2010 and Media Logic’s work on behalf of clients in the financial services sector and other regulated industries. The whitepaper identifies the distinct qualities that separate safe social marketing strategies from unproductive, or even counter-productive, efforts.

Media Logic welcomes all comments.