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Tue 18 Aug 2009

How to Target Users within Social Networks

Posted by Admin under Add new tag, Latest Info, Social Networking, column

One important aspect of social media optimization is finding individuals interested in your products or initiatives. One way to approach this is to find key influencers within a social network that might be interested in your offering.

This can be a difficult challenge at times therefore targeting and approaching the right people is key. With the help of Google one can alleviate some of the challenges that occur when searching for these people inside each network, as each network can be finicky when it comes to searching for users.

With the right search query used in Google, it is fairly easy to find these individuals. Here is one example: “site:facebook.com/people led zeppelin”

In this query, we took Facebook.com, which indexes profiles pages with personal interests (so long as that user has not turned off that feature in privacy settings) Now that you are able to find users on Facebook who have stated interest in Led Zeppelin you can approach them with much more certainty that they would be interested in your offering or service.

Once you have identified a group of users to outreach to you need to fine tune your pitch. I find success when the pitch typically is short, sweet, and to the point. Remember users on social networks are there to “hang out” per se and don’t want to be lambasted by pushy marketers, so make sure your offering is irresistible.

In the above example, we found users who are fans of Led Zeppelin, on Facebook, however this can be done on many other Social Networks. Below are example searches to use on 7 different social networks:

Linkedin

site:linkedin.com inurl:in “social media expert”

Bebo

site:.bebo.com inurl:profile inurl:bebo “social media expert”

CafeMom

site:www.cafemom.com inurl:cafemom.com/home/ “stay at home mom”

Facebook

site:facebook.com/people “led zeppelin”

Flickr

site:flickr.com/people “@gmail”

Twitter

site:twitter.com -inurl:statuses -inurl:status “social media expert”

MySpace

site:profile.myspace.com inurl:myspace inurl:fuseaction “go to nc state”

YouTube

site:youtube.com/user “social media expert”

Since it can be somewhat cumbersome to recreate these search queries on a whim I have designed a social search tool to help users. It’s a very basic Google gadget that has hard coded search queries into it, thus allowing you to simply query the respective social network.

Brian Chappell is the Senior Social Search Strategist at Ignite Social Media. With over 9 years of web design and search engine optimization experience, Brian has developed an in-depth organic search optimization background. He monitors, analyzes, and optimizes social media initiatives for Ignite. You can find him on Twitter @brianchappell

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

How to Target Users within Social Networks

Mon 11 May 2009

3 Strikes and You’re Out: How to Get More PPC Impressions Safely

Posted by Admin under Add new tag, Latest Info, Search Engine Marketing

Last week I discussed how to maximize PPC impressions for advertisers with unlimited budgets who want to reach as many good prospects in their niche as possible. (“5 Ways to Maximize PPC Impressions”)

Maximum Impression Share versus Lost Impressions

To maximize impressions, you also should look at your Exact Match IS to see what percentage of your impressions are coming from keywords NOT in your account. Get that by subtracting Exact Match IS from 100%. Then run a campaign report on all campaigns and check for Lost IS due to budget or rank. This will help you see whether you’re missing impressions due to campaign budgeting or to Ad Rank issues. In the latter case, you’ll need to either bid more, or improve CTR with account structure optimization and ad copy tests.

Once you’ve conquered that problem, your next problem is having reached the limit of impressions that any one account can get.

No single PPC account can get 100% of the impressions in any niche. Only ad per account will show for any one keyword search at a time.

How to Safely Go Beyond the Limits of One AdWords Account

An aggressive advertiser wants to be seen for 100% of searches for the keywords that get them the ROAS they want. And the only way to do this is with more AdWords accounts that use those same keywords. However, you must not violate AdWords’ Double Serving Policy, if you don’t want to risk getting shut down.

AdWords defines Double Serving as

Displaying more than one ad for the same company or person at a time.

But there are exceptions that will allow you to get more impressions within regulations.

In cases like our client, where more than one company is involved and a variety of products and price points, the following general parameters were offered by our AdWords Dedicated Support Team:
You are welcome to split up your separate business entities among different accounts. We consider websites to be double serving if they have the same purpose, over 80% product overlap, AND less than 25% price difference. As long as your websites steer clear of this criteria, you are welcome to set them up in whatever format is most convenient for you.

Creating Multiple Sites to Get More Impressions While Avoiding the Three Strikes of Double Serving

Disclaimer: our AdWords rep was very clear that these are reviewed case-by-case. There’s no guarantee that you’ll be approved if you heed these criteria. But it gives you a much better shot.

Let’s get out our lawyer hats, take this apart, and see how we can use it.

Note that the policy uses the word “AND” for the three criteria. You have to violate all three to get in trouble.

Websites should not have the:

Same purpose
>80% product overlap AND
<25% price difference

Purpose: Purpose is vague- but let’s assume you are selling cell phones on all three sites, and that’s the same purpose. You’d still have to violate the other two criteria to be double serving.

Product Overlap: Are the products 80% similar on the two sites? Oops, two strikes- one more and you’re out. Why not instead divide up your cell phones into two or three types, or by manufacturer?

One site per type, or one site per manufacturer.

Price Difference: If you do have two cell phone store websites with the same products, then one of the sites has to be a discount site to not violate the price difference criterion.

To take the safest route, create multiple websites with less than 80% product overlap and more than 25% price difference. If you can, make one site for sales and one for leads- that might also help you with the purpose criterion.

Ensuring That Prospects Accept Your New Websites

Like many strategies, this could be abused. Don’t be black hat. It won’t serve you in the end anyway, because your offering on every website has to appeal to the prospect that searches for your keywords. If the offer (ad) doesn’t fit the searcher mindset, though you may get good CTR with clever ads, your conversion rate will suffer and the overall effort won’t deliver good ROI.

While conceiving these new websites, think through the entire sales process from keyword to conversion. You’re trying to place more relevant ads for the same keyword searches, so make sure the offer you’ll have to present for these new sites will be appealing to your prospects.

This strategy is best for more general keyword searches, so you’ll need to divide website concepts in a way that doesn’t make their offerings too granular and specific for general keyword searches.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

3 Strikes and You’re Out: How to Get More PPC Impressions Safely