DISQUS

manobyte · 1 year ago

Nice article but WRONG http://www.byteorgetbitten.com/profiles/blogs/d...

Lorna Li · 1 year ago

I agree with you manobyte - your existing web analytics CAN tell you where your traffic is coming from, and what keywords brought people to your site, but it does nothing to tell you where existing conversations are happening on the WWW, which is where you need to be.

However, it your website analytics is a good starting point. To really get into social media conversations, however, you will need to set up online monitoring tools to track your brand and keywords. Or pay for expensive services like Radian 6, which will track those conversations and stack rank them in prioritized order of engagement.

Free tools can help with monitoring but are hard to scale for large enterprise companies.

For a down & dirty solution, you can try Kingsley Joseph's Social Media Firehose

http://pipes.yahoo.com/update_maker/social_medi...

Cheers,

Lorna Li

jacobmorgan · 1 year ago

lorna, well hello hello!

the point is not to just rely solely on seo and your analytics, it;s to incorporate some of the actual data that you have when forming a social media strategy. you have data for a reason, you have to use it :)

thanks for stopping by!

jacobmorgan · 1 year ago

not sure you understood my point. you don't solely rely on seo or on your analytics. you incoporate it as part of your strategy. not looking at how your existing users are already interacting with your site is a huge mistake. you can't immediately start off a social media strategy unless you understand the current situation. you start with home base and then expand. your analytics has a lot of valuable and insightful information that can help you identify listening channels and communities.

im not advocating targetting "you" im advocating understanding your existing user and customer base. your analytics is not going to give you 100% of the information and it's not an end all be all solution.

funny how you keep talking about starting with "people" yet you don;t want to start with "your people" which again, I think is a huge mistake that marketers and social media folks are making. I'm all about starting with people, that's why i want to look at the analytics to see how users are currently interacting with my site...

makes sense?

thanks for the comment

manobyte · 1 year ago

Good points! Yes I agree that using SEO as a part of the process is important.

Maria Reyes-McDavis · 1 year ago

Great, great information - an often missed component of designing a social media strategy :-)

jacobmorgan · 1 year ago

thanks so glad you enjoyed it!

Toma Bonciu · 1 year ago

Hi,

I also use my analytics to sell. I think you can use the region from where you get the most visitors to try and sell your products there or maybe what is the keyword that delivers the highest traffic volume. Analytics can offer very helpful informations that can be used in your marketing campaign especially if the numbers are high.

jacobmorgan · 1 year ago

oh, you're analytics can give you some extremely valuable and powerful information. far more info then any form of traditional advertising or marketing can give you.

thanks for the comment!

Kinchie · 1 year ago

Great article, Jacob. This is a component that I have not yet used, but will start examining right away.

jacobmorgan · 1 year ago

you better! play around on your analytics platform, you will be amazed with the info you have access to at this very second.

thanks for the comment!

Ghennipher · 1 year ago

I've had some really interesting discussions with others in the SoMe space who feel that starting by listening is the only right way to proceed with a Social Media strategy. I only partly agree because I think that view leaves valuable customer insight unused.

My idea has always been, 'Since we've got analytical data on visitors, why not incorporate it into a listening strategy?' Certainly, Social Media is 100% about the customer - therefore a Social Media consultant sets up a business to monitor conversations. But why ignore the obvious, just because conversations may have more immediate impact? If businesses truly care about their customers, they'll care about the little things too - how visitors came to their site, how they use their site, how often they come back - in addition to the Social Media conversations they're having about their products, services, brand, etc. As in offline relationships, it's often 'the litle things' that make the most difference. Analytics should not be ignored in an effective Social Media Strategy.

I think as time goes on and measurements rightly become a standard part of any new Social Media strategy, we'll find more collaborations between Internet marketing pros and Social Media pros. And what a coup for the business owner who hires a Social Media Consultant who understands the symbiosis between SEO, analytics, and creating a truly effective Social Media strategy!

Great post!
@ghennipher

jacobmorgan · 1 year ago

listening is great but not looking at your existing information is just sinful! you have to start off at home base with the information you already have, this can technically be a part of listening.

thanks for the kind words, glad you enjoyed!

manobyte · 1 year ago

OK So let's go back the POST Method. Which starts with PEOPLE.

Yes we need to "Listen" to PEOPLE and using SEO and Web Site Analytics give your valuable insight insight into the existing people. Then we need to "Listen" across the social web to learn what our web site analytics are is not telling us.

Sharon Dexter · 1 year ago

Great post and I agree totally. Understanding the audience is a key factor to defining the strategy.

jacobmorgan · 1 year ago

thanks a lot for the kind words sharon! definitely must understand your current audience to see potential for new audience.

J

bob · 1 year ago

Jacob, Nice post! As social media matures in 2009 more and more leaders will realize that social and search are part of one big digital strategy. Social is definitely the flavor of the month but it cannot hide from the fact that search is second nature now to most people on the internet now. So, to your point it cannot work in isolation but companies who merge the two will reap greater rewards and actually see some ROI coming from their "social" strategies. To add to your post, you can in fact use social networks as a great tool to mine new keywords for your business too. Most of the time, Search marketers are optimizing for the same set "head" keywords but it is the "tail" approach that pays well. Social networks i have found is a great keyword research tool and can be used to further your search marketing efforts. TO your point, search and social complement each other as at the end of the day they all become part of the 10 blue lines. Thanks, Bob.

jacobmorgan · 1 year ago

hey bob, thanks! social media and search definitely need to be integrated and there are a lot of learnings that can be shared between the two, such as keyword research as you mentioned. 2009 will be an interesting year!

thanks for the comment!