Conversions, Conversations: Social Media and SEO

Writing by Brick Marketing on Thursday, 26 of June , 2008 at 9:03 am

Michael Brito on Britopian.com began his own coversation on the merits of Social Media conversations verses tradtional search impressions. Obviously each person is biased by their personality in regards to what they value more.
Michael wrote:

So to address the original question of “What’s more important: a million impressions or 5 relationships? and considering that I am referring to all web users in general, I would say it depends who you ask. Paul would say impressions and then narrow it down to a click-through rate – conversion rate – revenue per keyword – cost per acquisition – blah blah blah. Yes, he is THAT ANALYICAL. For me it was about engagement, relationships, conversational sentiment and tone; and I could care less about the clicks and impressions.

Now, Michael’s aquaintance was ‘That Analytical Guy’ focused on the hard numbers, and let’s face it, most companies drill down to the importance of a number. If it’s not quantifiable, than it can’t be put in a spreadsheet. If it’s not in a spreadsheet, then the top execs aren’t looking at it. If the top execs aren’t looking at it, it’s not important. The aquaintance was obviously biased based on what his job, and his personality deemed important. He was a numbers guy.
Michael, on the other hand, is a bigger-picture-guy. He wants to build the relationships, which are the backbone in social media marketing, in order to build his business. That the two of them work together is probably a sign of a healthy buisness strategy.
It’s Michael’s next point that intriqued me:

I would also say that the users who were browsing HP Shopping were “ready to buy” and could care less about engagement and conversations at that precise moment; which is probably a common scenario for most e-commerce related businesses, where users do want to be sold something.

It’s true that once customers are on your site, they’re ready to buy, especially if they’ve clicked directly to you and are searching your products, and Michael explicitly recognizes that.

To do social media justice, however, you have to remember that a good company reputation thorugh social media is imperative. For the social influencers, a bad experience with a company can spread like internet wildfire, and the hundred and thousands of social contacts will read about that bad experience, and believe me, they’ll stay away from the company. The same is true of a good experience read by thousands of contacts…the company in question will be left with a good impression (HA!) in thousands of potential customer’s phychees.

Category: Local Search Engine Optimization, Social Media

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