How to Gain Online Influence With Search, Social and Content Marketing

GUEST BLOG BY MATTHEW O’BRIEN OF MINT SOCIAL
There is a three pack to marketing a business online that digital marketers now have engrained in their brains; search, social and content marketing. Over the years we have seen the marketing message for these three disciplines evolve from a more sales-based brand promotion to educating and informing an audience of one. More telling is how our measurement tools are more geared towards conversions vs. measuring impressions.
The Expert
As a marketer, getting the attention of your target market requires growing your online influence and visibility, not only in search engines but also in social networks. This one-to-one marketing approach is causing businesses to re-engineer their overall marketing strategy for both online and offline marketing-and repurposing brochures as blog posts just does not cut it. However, giving away tips and secrets on how to be successful does work; but there seems to still be reluctance with sharing what can be construed as proprietary info about ones’ business.
A typical response against sharing potentially sensitive information is:
“Why would we give away our trade secrets? There is no need to hire us if we are giving the information away for free.”
In comes social proof. Today, potential customers are searching the Web to find the best companies to work with. Social proof is when your website, social networks and blog offer useful information about your niche market that present your business as an expert. A company like Geek Squad is a good example. With their Geek Squad YouTube channel, one will find a library of do-it-yourself videos that offer the same information that you would if you hired them for a job.
Why does this strategy work? More likely than not, most people are either too lazy or not savvy enough to do it themselves-but by putting your business out there as an expert, guess who the customer will keep in mind when they need help?
Content
Getting found online, especially in search engines, is best done through focused content marketing. If you want to be the most relevant in search engines, you need to be published with content that is specific to this search. More importantly, you want to have content in useful formats like videos, blog posts, articles and photos. Social networks are really search engines to your trusted community and potential prospects.
Think of the Associated Press model. A reporter writes one article that gets published in 100s, if not 1000s of newspapers and online portals. Your content should follow the Associated Press model by using social networks like Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Tumblr as one of many ways to distribute your content. If your content is good, it will get shared and gain popularity in search engines.
Think Campaigns vs. Single Events
The way to get the most out of your content marketing efforts relating to search and social media is to create ongoing campaigns around your top terms that relate to your specialty. Writing one blog post on your top keyword can be hit or miss. However, if you create a video, you can then transcribe the text of the video for a blog post, publish it to YouTube, and take screen shots from the video for photo marketing in social networks. Now, one piece of content has transformed into a multimedia marketing campaign that can be published over an extended period of time.
Marketing is a process of fine-tuning and learning from successes and failures. Don’t be afraid to experiment and fail.
Fail fast and fail often and the road to success will come at you faster.
About Matt O’Brien & Mint Social
Matt O’Brien has over 19 years of experience in digital media; starting with a Fortune 500 company and running Internet technology companies from startup stage to exit strategy. In addition to founding Mint Social, Matt has developed educational curriculum that brings the best marketing, sales and leadership minds together to help businesses quickly and efficiently implement social media to impact their bottom line.
He recently launched a social media marketing technology to bridge the gap between search marketing and social media to maximize the effectiveness of online businesses in the Internet world. He launched World Webinar Network | Social Media Marketing Seminars and Webinars, and most recently helped create and serves as a board member of the first interactive marketing association in Arizona, AZIMA. Matthew is an active volunteer with many non‐profit agencies and a member of the community relations team for St. Vincent de Paul.
Mint Social is a social media marketing and online branding company that accelerates online marketing by building content engines to increase visibility and reputation in search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing) and in social networks. Mint Social helps businesses understand (through implementation) why social media and online branding is critical to online marketing success and provides the tools for delivering measurable results along the way.
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