January 13th, 2012
Report Shows SEO Still Ahead of Social Media Marketing
The hotdog vendor has a social media strategy, do you?
Social media is now a bonafide marketing tool for small and medium enterprises. A recent report from Borrell Associates showed how SMEs have adopted social media strategies to enhance their marketing efforts. Most local businesses have contributed to the SME adoption of social media as a marketing boost. It’s not a secret that a social network like Facebook has become a marketplace turning it to a destination-location for merchants and customers.
The report shows that most local businesses between 45% and 70% have already established a social media presence through Facebook and about 60% and 64% of these businesses have a formal presence on social media sites. These aren’t surprising figures, MerchantCircle found that 70% of SMEs are already using Facebook as a means to promoted their products and services. However, Borrell’s report showed that social media marketing was still behind SEO and paid-search last year.
Many local businesses still depend on SEO for potential customers to find them and improve their lead generation. But SMM is catching up in a tremendous way, the report estimates that $6.2 billion was spent on paid-social in 2011. Facebook’s advertising platform has covered 65% of the entire social media advertising last year. With Twitter’s Promoted Tweets and Facebook enhanced advertising platform, it’s a possibility that budget for social media advertising will surpass SEO and paid-search.
SEO pundits might raise their eyebrows with these findings, but it’s a fact that Facebook being more complicated to use with its gamut of changes and the lack of a standard metric for social ROI conversion rates. It’s too early to tell if social media advertising is the end-all and be-all to improve your online marketing. One thing’s for sure, as long as Google’s social products like Google Places and Google+ integrate smoothly with Google’s search engine, search engine marketing is always the old reliable.
December 16th, 2011
Study Shows Where Consumers Search for Local Business Info
More good news for SEO. While more business owners are slowly embracing strategies in the age of social business, customers are still leaning on the old reliable for local business information. Most local businesses like restaurants and bars will likely to put up a Facebook page or a Twitter account but old reliable tools like SEO and word of mouth still brings the revenue for them.
In a study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the Internet is the top choice for local business information, followed by print media like newspapers and third is word of mouth. The surprising thing about the study is that even though social media networks are increasing in popularity, customers aren’t really depending on Facebook or Twitter whenever they look for information about a local business.
The study was conducted among over 2,000 adults with ages from 18 and older. 51% of adults who search for content about restaurants and bars use the Internet. 38% of the demographic use search engines to find local restaurant information. A meager of 3% check social networks for local business info.
It seems customers think useful content is really found when you use a search engine rather than check a Facebook page. Content wouldn’t be limited to a business’ website, reviews and ratings from sites like Yelp and Google Places listings increase a local business’ visibility in the SERPs as well. Of course, social media isn’t a fad, but it’s not replacing SEO. Social search is still in infancy stages, it’s up to Google to enhance the very idea and turn it into substantial marketing tool for local business owners.
