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Why Content Matters in Search and Social Marketing

There’s no doubt you’ve been hearing a lot about content marketing this year. Along with search and social marketing, these three topics have been dominating B2B marketing conversations and are at the top of everyone’s minds.

A recent conversation between MarketingSherpa and author Rob Garner of Search and Social: The Definitive Guide to Real-Time Content Marketing discusses the importance of content and the overlap between search, social and content marketing. This overlap, according to Garner, builds a connected brand. By providing content to your customers online you are also satisfying the search engines and getting in front of new customers – all in one step.

Especially helpful are the top 5 tips for marketers. While a few may serve as more of a reminder, they’re all relevant and great to keep in mind as we lay out plans for 2013.

• Being present. Keeping content fresh – your customers want more than just an updated profile. Frequent activity (status updates, blog posts, “shares” and “likes”, etc.) keep customers interested in and aware of your brand.
• “Recency is the new relevancy”. Not only is this true in social marketing where our audience only sees most updated content first, but the same goes for search. Simply put, new content = higher visibility.
• Understand natural language. In addition to knowing the language of your audience, Garner suggests having tools for keyword and language processing. Tap into the value of online conversations your customers and prospects are having.
• Big, high quality content wins. Successful results from search and social marketing are correlated to the quantity and quality of the content you are putting out there. This includes everything from articles to comments to memes.
• Personality matters. Content that is unique in your space and personal to your brand will resonate with your audience and will get noticed by networks and search engines.

For even more on content marketing, check out our new whitepaper Content Marketing for Industrial Marketers. Learn how content marketing will help you build your brand, drive engagement and establish yourself as a thought leader in your space.

Content Marketing Industrial Marketing and Sales Marketing, General SEM SEO Social Media
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Learn The Facts Behind Third-Party Traffic Estimation

When planning marketing programs, industrial marketers want to know what the statistics are behind a proposed online marketing program.

However, to comprehend what these statistics really mean, a marketer must understand a few key components about how these statistics are derived.

We all know the basics of Web statistics: number of visits, unique visitors, and page views. This specific data helps us to understand the size of the target audience we can reach by advertising on a particular Web site.

An additional piece of information that is really key – yet seldom understood – is what it means when a Web publisher refers to data from third-party Web traffic estimators.

Learn the important facts behind third-party traffic estimation - Read the full white paper, “The Marketer’s Dilemma: Estimating Traffic on Web Sites for Online Advertising Purposes“.

Industrial Marketing and Sales Marketing, General SEM
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Search friendly URL’s can only help ranking

A lot of work goes into putting a web-site together: content creation, page design, and site architecture are all important elements. One element that may seem obvious but is often overlooked is the URL for each page. In his article URL Best Practices and Guidelines Reminder, Jody Nimetz of Enquiro Search Solutions Inc. offers a list of best practices to consider when creating and or revising the URL's for your site. Jody Nimtez is an on-line marketing specialist who offers tips and advice on his blog Marketing Jive.

SEM SEO Usability Web Sites – Design & Usability
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Listen to “GlobalSpec: Firing Up the Vertical Search Market”

Check out this interview video spotlight entitled, "GlobalSpec: Firing Up the Vertical Search Market".  Chief Sales & Marketing Officer Angela Hribar was recently interviewed by Adotas.com, an online news publication focused on the Internet advertising and media industry for members of the advertising community

In it, Hribar discusses GlobalSpec, our philosophy and what differentiates us from other online advertising solutions for the industrial marketplace.   Topics include company history, our audience, vertical search, competition, and the imprint that GlobalSpec has made.  Yes I’m biased, but this is worth watching if you want to learn more about what sets GlobalSpec apart from other online options. 

She encourages listeners to include vertical search as part of their marketing plan, saying, "If you’re not getting some experience with vertical search through GlobalSpec, you’re putting yourselves and your customers at a disadvantage, now and well into the future.  I’m not saying that GlobalSpec should be 100% of your media buy, but it should be the essential foundation of the media mix for anyone who’s in this space."

Industrial Marketing and Sales SEM
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Round-up of the Top B2B Search Engines

Search Engine Land features a post on the top B2B search engines. While Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have the lion’s share of the search traffic and dollars, vertical search engines continue to grow. General search engines are often the starting point of a search and lead to vertical sites. From the searcher’s view point, the vertical niche sites provide more relevant results and easier access to comprehensive content in a one-stop-search experience. 

 

For the B2B advertiser, vertical search engines offer much more than a general search engine. Vertical search engines provide a higher quality lead as a result of their targeted audience.  In GlobalSpec’s case we provide more than a click – we provide contact information of the searcher to the advertiser. 

 

GlobalSpec is called out in the Search Engine Land article. Click here to read the full article.

SEM
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Search Engine Friendly Web Sites

With engineers and other technical professionals
regularly using the Web to search for components and suppliers, you
need a Web site that shows up well on search engines. In an ideal
world, optimizing your Web site for search engines is a task that
begins in the planning stages of building your site.

That sounds fine, but who has the luxury of working
in the ideal world? Your company already has a Web site, but you don’t
have the budget or time in 2007 to tear down your entire site and start
from scratch. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t make your existing
site more search engine friendly.

SEM Web Sites – Design & Usability