Here’s an excerpt from our July 12 webcast on the topic of paid search and paid social — and how the two are inter-related. Below is a transcript of the first half of this webcast — for the complete recording, visit our on-demand section.
Social Media Success = Search + Social: How to Get More Lift Integrating Search With Social Media
July 12, 2011
Moderator: Craig Macdonald
Speaker: Alex Funk
• Why should advertisers care about social media?
Craig Macdonald: A recent study showed that in the US, people spending 370 minutes per month on social media, but only 230 on search. That’s a big shift.
Alex Funk:
Yes, social networks have grown and matured. More than 65 million people ‘like’ something daily on Facebook and more than 200 million tweets are posted daily on Twitter. That’s enough to fill a 10 million page book every day.
With the growth in the number of these users comes ad spend. Emarketer forecast Facebook advertising to jump from $1.86 billion in 2010 to $4.05 billion in 2011 to $5.74 billion in 2012; Twitter advertising forecast to grow from $45 million (2010) to $150 million (2011) to $250 million in 2012.
And – Google has gotten serious about this too, with the recent launch of Google Plus.
What do advertisers see as the main benefits of Social Media? Results from a study by focus.com and eMarketer:
- Customer Engagement (85%)
- Direct Customer Communication (65%)
- Speed of Feedback (60%)
- Learning Customer Preferences (59%)
- Low Cost (51%), Brand Building (48%)
- Market Research (42%)
- Credibility of the Crowd (40%)
- Reach (37%)
- Lead Gen (21%)
- Customer Service (17%)
• Why should SEARCH MARKETERS care about social media?
Craig Macdonald: A recent SEMPO survey asked marketers who is responsible for social media in your organization? is it PR? is it display? SEO? PPC? how do we organize it — why do the search marketers care?
Results showed that search marketers and their departments are the ones adding the responsibility for managing paid social media programs.
Alex Funk: Search and Social have converged. Not just in the organization — search engines are using social signals in returning results. While searcher use keywords that show intent, social media provides more information that includes user recommendations.
Much of what search marketers and agencies do can translate to social media — so search agencies are well-positioned to tackle paid social media. For example, paid search uses keywords — these keywords transpose into social media likes and interests, topics. Search marketers look at SERP listings — in social media that translates to pages and profiles.
Metrics are also similar — cost-per-click in search becomes cost per follow, cost per engagement, or cost per fan in search.
In social media, we have the ability to hyper-target because of user-generated content. Search marketers have keywords to discern intent, but social media provides us with more information about the user. When you are targeting social media users, be sure to look at power users as opposed to all registrants in the network — especially when it comes to Twitter.
Audience Poll Question:
Where does budget come from for paid social programs?
- Independent budget – 40%
- Search – 42%
- Display – 10%
- PR – 8%
- Mobile – 1%