Real-time Marketing: Connections and Flows
November 9, 2011

iCrossing - Agency services

with clients including…

The web has evolved into a real-time,
networked, and synaptic environment

One that is acting more like a
digital organism, rather than a
simple set of nodes

Yet many most marketers are still
resigned to a passive, rather than
active and agile approach to marketing

While they may be connected, they are
not fully alive and present

The current state of this evolution is not so
much about “social networks”…
…as it is about hitting a tipping point with
a society that is networked

…exclusion from the network is tantamount to
digital non-existence

Published content is disseminated
instantaneously
The fundamental principles of search and network
marketing apply

…through active and passive publishing,
there is a profoundly meaningful
opportunity to connect

What this means to marketers
• Marketers must act as publishers
• Markets are conversations (thank you Cluetrain)
• “Publishing” is redefined to fit different digital aspects, including
conversation
• You have an obligation to dig into data and learn about your
target audience
• You have to act in real-time, because it is the nature of the
medium
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Real-time marketing
• Thinking like a real-time
marketer means being
present
• It takes a lot of preparation
• It takes a lot of attention
• Conversations are best
addressed while they are
happening
• If you don’t have the time, find
someone (or a group) in your
company who can make time
• Hire somebody (or a group)
you can trust to speak on
behalf of your company
Just one example of a space where
real-time conversations are happening

Community Management
Community Management is real-time, active participation within social spaces
that goes beyond just sharing content:
• Ongoing listening
• Using keyword search, following and monitoring streams, push alerts, etc.
• Establishing search-sensitive social nomenclature and set of behaviors
• Converse naturally, but also be aware of major keyword triggers that can help extend your message when
it makes sense
• Pro-actively sharing content based on listening and SEO value
• Share and help solve a problem – you benefit in search, and in social
• Making friends, supporting and giving visibility to your Fans and Followers
• Show appreciation, and that you are present
• Amplifying content
• Use your relevant social networks as a key platform for content distribution (only when it is relevant to the
conversation)
• Building and maintaining relationships with key influencers
• This group is like a mouthpiece for your content, and can send distribution into networks of networks
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Social media engagement strategy categorization
Description Best Suited For
Paid media placements in social spaces that are Supporting short-term campaigns or promotions
Social often “derivatives” of typical online media and driving traffic, in conjunction with traditional
Advertising placements offline and online media buys
Sharing of relevant digital content through Increasing exposure for brand or product
Content various website channels, including distributing to through continuous distribution of content or
Distribution content communities “assets” to communities
Starting an ongoing dialogue with consumers by Building short-term or long-term relationships
Active reaching out in their communities and sharing with key influencers online through direct
Outreach content that is useful, relevant, and portable conversations
Integrating social elements into your website, Establishing your long-term web presence and
On-site creating a web experience that meets consumer allowing visitors to share experience with others
Integration expectations for sharing content and interacting (this is increasingly a best practice for website
with other users development roadmaps)
Initiatives that seek to build customer dialogue Creating long-term active relationships with
Community and engagement over time through active loyal customer base; establishing a “social
Building community participation and management CRM” or online “focus group” with an embedded
value exchange for users

How do you decide which social space is best for your
business?
• Who is your audience?
• Where does your audience
congregate and converse?
• Are they on major networks
like Twitter or Facebook, or
smaller communities better
known to your industry?
• How does your audience like
to consume content?
Images? Video? Blog posts?
Source: Flickr, CC Lic., by SocialGrow

Forums: Thinking outside the major networks
• Identifying forums
• Use Google discussion search
• Use search to find major networks

CONTENT PRODUCTION AND
DISTRIBUTION
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blogs
events sem
feeds
display
instore
kiosk desktop
information
assets
seo
content
data
functionality website
mms
social sms
gadgets
widgets
video
email
wom
ugc
mobile

Traffic stream types occurring from a
social approach
Keyword Popularity
Discovery
Social network trigger feed Streams
Search traffic Streams
traffic streams “Push”
streams
streams Channels based on Channels based
Human propagated social voting, or on popularity of
through social Non-social feeds, discovery through shared or visited
Fundamental product
of content creation networks, status alerts, news feeds, personalization, content in through
updates, content push content via keyword triggers in personalization,
and promotion preferred networks,
promotion or keyword emphasis recommendations,
(assuming it is recommendations,
citation across via email and RSS etc.
crawlable and networks etc.
indexable)
ex. Google Alerts, Ex. “Most read,”
Ex. StumbleUpon,
ex. Traffic from or content matched “most emailed,”,
ex. Google natural Amazon.com
links in Twitter or on-page via “most
search referrals. “people who bought”
Facebook status. keyword triggered recommended”
feed.

Becoming a content producer
• Perform in-depth keyword and market research
• Identify types of content to be targeted (videos, images, news,
text, etc.)
• Plan to develop containers for the asset types that will be
promoted (HTML, feeds, Web site architecture, etc.)
• Develop a detailed content strategy
• Develop a strategic plan for social content dissemination and
engagement
• Identify primary and secondary metrics
• Customize dashboards and analytics platforms to accommodate
new metrics
• Determine the specific resources needed for content
development, deployment and social interaction, based on the
scale determined in the strategy

Identifying content asset types to be targeted
• - How-to’s
- FAQ’s
- Long and short informational articles
- Interviews
- Documenting events using multiple digital assets
- Infographics
- Video
- Apps
- Databases
- Answers
- Directories, curated link lists
- Conversations (commenting, forums, etc.)
- White papers
- Powerpoint
- Reviews
- Live and recorded webinars

Keyword demand, conversation demand
• 1) Knowing what your audience is looking for
• 2) Knowing where they seek it out
• 3) Knowing how they communicate
• 4) Knowing which types of digital assets are critical
• 5) Communicating back properly, with the right answer, in the
right way, with utmost sincerity, and with a strategic approach
in mind
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Finding conversation demand
• "what should I“
• "where do I"
• "how many"
• “I am considering"
• "looking for“
• …or any other phrase that ends in question mark.
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Social’s Impact on Search and SEO

Shift in Linking Measurement: Social impact on SEO
• Links are the cornerstones of
natural search algorithms
• But influence of links has shifted
greatly from webmasters and
technical influencers, to the
average Internet user
• As a result, the social graph has
taken a massive bite out of the link
graph
• Examples of this include:
• Tweeting (not a direct link)
• Publishing via blog CMS such as
WordPress or Blogger
• Rating, commenting, posting
• Bookmarking
• Etc.
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Link network size expanded through social
Before outreach After outreach
• NetworkSense Map: # nodes indicates instances of a keyword or URL; the larger the node the more inbound links it has
• The larger the network, the more mentions, inbound links and traffic point to each node

Meet the Share Graph
A new kind of social link graph
• Search engine’s view of sharing activities across the social
graph
• Takes into consideration
• Authority of the network sharer
• Theme of the user, or related concepts of the network sharer
• Depth of the network sharer’s network, and the authority of those in the
network
• Trustworthiness of the network sharer (in relation to the likelihood that they
produce spam or low-quality content
• Velocity of keyword usage across a network, and the spreading of that
keyword or phrase over time though shared networks
• Velocity of link being shared, over time, based on time frequency, volume,
and level that it cascades though various networks
• Kind of like a cross between the link graph and the social graph
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Social relevancy:
It’s just common-sense SEO
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Social Relevancy: How engines are looking at Twitter
Consider the parallel aspects of websites, and Twitter accounts
• Domain authority : username authority
• Duplicate content : retweets
• Blogging freshness : content freshness : microblogging freshness
• Links : number of followers
• Quality of links : Quality of followers
• Inbound links vs. outbound links : ratio of followers in contrast to the
number of people followed
• Linking to bad : good neighborhoods
• Themes of Twitter users
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A few thoughts on Google+

Velocity
• Google+ is tracking the speed of traffic by time-stamping every
click
• This helps determine “QDF” factors (“query deserves
freshness”), and rank sites accordingly

+1
- +1-ing other sites adds a level of
trust for others in your network
- iCrossing believes that
authoritative and aggregated plus-
ones and shares will provide
increased visibility for the sites
being shared
- Plus-one the pages you really
like and would use
- Add a +1 button to your content
to encourage other Google+
users to spread the word, and
send a signal
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Google+
• “Plus one annotated URLs receive
20% higher CTR in the SERPs.”
- Google
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Social relevancy in Google+ now critical towards
search relevancy in Google Web search
In other words, social signals offer Google a proprietary social lens in to apply
towards the Google search algorithm when necessary

Google+ - The Bottom Line
• Yes, marketers should become active in Google+
• Google+ should be treated as a primary top-tier social network, in line with
Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn
• Social presence and network signals in Google+ will have an impact on
standard web search
• Engagement and outreach programs will be critical to search
• Content production and promotion will be critical to success in Google+ and
Google web search
• Natural search tactics critical to social in terms of extending opportunities in
networks
• Search and social practitioners must become fully literate in both search and
social to be successful
• Google+ is about search+social, and this will be a core theme for marketers for
some time to come
• Continue to watch the Google+ story develop – this is just the beginning, and it
will continue to change

THANK YOU
Rob Garner
VP, Strategy
iCrossing.com
Rob.Garner@icrossing.com
@robgarner
214.676.2089
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