Using Your SEO and Analytics to Create a Social Media Strategy

From class participant Nicole D - I read a great post today on Social Media Today's website. Here's the link: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/61280

I think Jacob's got some great points and it gives a nice counter-viewpoint to what we've discussed in class.

Let’s briefly outline some of the things your analytics can show you and why these things are valuable:

• What keywords users are typing into search engines to find you, this can give you a good idea of how users see your company or your brand. What keywords or phrases do they associate with you/your brand?

• What keywords users are NOT typing into search engines to find you. If the company brands itself as one thing, but the users see the company as something else; well then you know you have an issue here. Understanding this will help you create your communities.

• Where your traffic is coming from, is it through digg, twitter, etc? This can give you a good idea of where your communities already exist (if you have them) or where you need to create them. If I see a good portion of my traffic coming from twitter, then I probably already have an evangelist or a community that I can tap into.

• What part of the world are my users coming from? This will help me understand where I need to focus my efforts of community building. If I am a global brand trying to target Germany yet I see no traffic coming from there, then perhaps I want to step up my game, maybe hold a few offline events/speaking engagements, create a more German targeted site, etc.

• Top content categories. If I have a page with several tabs (X, Y, Z) and I see that Y is the most popular tab, then perhaps I would want to build a community around “Y” or see if existing communities exist. Knowing what your users love the most on your site is a great starting point for a social media campaign or strategy.

• Visitor segmentation by language. This is simple yet powerful. If I see that I have an English speaking site that is getting interest from a lot of foreign speaking countries, then I should create communities or microsites for my foreign speaking friends.

• Drilldown by network location. I can actually see if most of my users are coming from charter, comcast, verizon, bellsouth, etc. Understanding this may help in possible cross-branding communities or promotions through social media channels.

• Visitor loyalty lets me see how many times the same person has visited my site. This can help me understand if I have possible fans or evangelists out there, of course this is crucial. If I see that I have a few brand evangelists I would invite them to help me promote my content.