Stephen Nold

Five Benefits of Social Media

July 22, 2009
A question prevalent in the tradeshow industry recently is ‘what the heck do I do with all this social media stuff?’

Funny thing is all the social media experts I have been following have become a broken record: ‘You gotta go get some of this Social Media stuff!’ My response? OK – but then what? Sure – social media is a game changer, but how?

Here is my attempt to tackle this topic and try not to overwhelm those who are just getting into the game. By the way, almost everyone is just now getting into the game so you should not feel behind.


A really succinct comment left recently on my Challenge for Traditional Events and Exhibitions in Embracing an Online Connected World post, a comment by Cliff Allen made sense

For most people, social media isn't a "destination" -- it's a tool to get to the destination so they can be with other people.

I would modify this observation slightly by adding a business purpose:

Social media isn't a "destination" -- it's a tool in the integrated marketing plan that connects people with other people. If the content is good and visitors feel some passion and loyalty to those relationships, a community grows. Within that community is potential customers.

As part of the Marketing plan, Social Media solutions are quickly gaining respect. Many advocates would suggest Social or New Media is replacing traditional media. In his book The New Rules of Marketing and PR, David Meerman Scott defines a new approach that is changing the way marketers must consider their marketing objectives.

Successful Internet Marketing Campaign
One of the most tangible business applications of social media is the impact on an Internet Marketing Campaign. The goal is to direct the excitement of a community conversation into website traffic that in turn creates an inbound marketing program resulting in new leads and eventually closed opportunities.

Sounds a little magical? It shouldn’t be. There is no real rocket science involved and many organizations are doing it all the time. Listed below are five key benefits from harnessing social media tools for inbound marketing. In turn, smart inbound marketing can provide a new approach for growing a community of prospective customers leading into closed business.

Social Media Influences SEO
One of the greatest objectives for a successful Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy is generating links. One of the greatest benefits of social media is the tendency of a community to create links to good content. A passionate community is a linking community. Relevant topics gain momentum as viral channels grab information and distribute it to the rest of the world.

Social Media Impacts Paid Advertising on Search Engines
Generating organic traffic for a web site is considered the lowest cost approach to increasing visibility. Paid advertising, also known as pay per click (PPC), can also become a smart tactic to assist in an Internet marketing campaign. Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion. This strategy can generate significant results when launching a new campaign, targeting a specific audience, or just seeking to grab visibility in front of competitor customers.

Social Media Creates High Quality Web Pages That Engage and Persuade
Content is still the king so show producers must stay accountable to the design of quality content. Carefully planned content engages the reader, increases search engine rankings and traffic and promotes quality links from other sites. Bad content can quickly teach prospective community members to stay away. Both originality and creativity are the keys to retaining community members.

Social Media is Measureable
You need to guage your success, even if it is just to create a benchmark to determine what is working.
A web analytics program measure the links that send traffic to your site, what content to which they are linking, what content most interests your visitors and what sites they searched to find your site.

If you know your visitor types, referring sites and why they reached your site, it gives knowledge on how to create additional valuable content. Know what improves your rank which in turn should give you why other sites connect and trust your site and what related topics you should consider.

Social Media Improves Site Conversion Rates
Conversion rates are the percentage of website visitors that convert into leads and the percentage of leads that converts to customers. This is often referred as a sales funnel. It is important to measure conversion rates in the funnel in order to improve results. Each stage represents a conversion: website visitors to leads and leads to customers.

Don't forget the technical issues that can hamper results. Address the technical issues that can obstruct the crawling/indexing efforts of search engines. This element of website design starts to get into the technical jargon that I promised not to deploy in this post. Suffice it to say, if you don’t have the expertise to address how SEO spiders crawl your site, get that expertise either in the form of a web developer or a consultant.

In summary, social media enhances SEO which in turn benefits an inbound marketing campaign. Get onboard and 'get you summa of this stuff' before it does become to late!

Posted by Stephen Nold on July 22, 2009