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11.05.09 Budgeting Your Social Media SEO Efforts  By Lee Odden Social Media Marketing is getting a lot of attention in the media on and offline, causing many business marketers to wonder how to adjust budgets and resources to participate. Others that have allocated funds to Social Media and SEO programs without proper implementation, timelines or measurement may question their return on investment. While businesses decide to push or pull budgets, companies that are focused on winning market share and driving revenue are soundly and consistently investing in a mix of digital tactics involving search, email, online PR and of course, social media. Adding to the marketing mix often means outsourcing and good consultants are not cheap. For many companies, the decision to widen the range of marketing services and get help externally means budget reallocation. For some, it means the blasphemy of cutting tried and true marketing programs in order to chase after shiny social media. The good news is that there are ways to have your Social SEO cake and eat it too. For marketers that want to take full advantage of search engine optimization and social media, here are two of the most important cost saving tips to make both bean counters and marketers happy.  Plan ahead. Setting goals is fundamental to marketing but with a social SEO strategy, it's important to understand the difference in outcomes as well as the tactics used to reach goals. SEO performance indicators are typically links, rankings, referrer and search traffic, inquiries, sales and other conversions. Depending on goals, social media KPIs will include brand mentions on other social sites, links, comments, measures of engagement, media placements, measures of sentiment about brand terms, syndication and growth of networks. Setting goals for SEO distinct from Social Media is an important first step to creating a Social SEO strategy. SEO on it's own can drive sales. SEO can also help grow social networks via discovery through search. Optimizing content for search within social networks improves discovery in places where Google and other search engines can't reach. In comScore's August 2009 Search Engine Rankings report, 3 of the top search engines were social media sites: YouTube, MySpace and Facebook. Companies that focus their optimization efforts solely on Google.com will miss the continued trend towards social search or search within social networks. Social media facilitates word of mouth and requires ongoing participation to realize the most benefit. Whatever word of mouth can do for a business in the offline world, social media can do online; only faster and to a much larger community. Understand the difference between SEO and Social Media outcomes and you'll save a significant amount of money on the normal discovery and learning phase of a Social SEO engagement.  Continue reading this article. About the Author: Lee Odden is CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, a digital marketing and public relations firm in Minnesota that specializes in search, social and online PR consulting and training for companies worldwide. Odden has been cited for his internet marketing expertise over the past 10 years by the Economist, Forbes and U.S. News and contributed a chapter to the book, "Online Marketing Heroes" published by Wiley. For the past 5 years he has also been the editor of TopRank's Online Marketing Blog, a Technorati 100 favorite blog and one of the top marketing blogs according to Advertising Age. |
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