The Battle for Traffic: Organic SEO vs. Social Media Marketing

SEO and SMM are like pizza and cheese: you can get one without the other, but, believe me, it isn’t worth it.

Nowadays SEO cannot be effective without well-executed content curation. And that’s where social media kicks in — it helps you unlock untapped potential. Compared to other marketing channels, social media benefits SEO in unexpected ways. It’s not surprising that SEO and SMM have slowly become closely intertwined activities that all businesses want to take advantage of. But how exactly can SEO and SMM work together? Do social media signals affect your site’s visibility in Google? I’ve been investigating this topic for quite a long time and here's what I’ve learned so far:

• Social media signals don’t influence site rankings
• SEO isn’t effective without harnessing social media channels

In this post, I want to highlight the following idea: When you share content on SMM channels you’re not only getting engagement, but also bringing visitors to your site. This in turn helps you boost your site’s visibility: SMM corresponds to SEO and indirectly influences website performance in Google. My analysis shows that SMM impacts SEO much more than you might think. The truth is that, paradoxically, organic channels bring more traffic to SMM-focused blogs than to SEO-focused ones.

What is the average CTR on Facebook ads?

What is the average CTR on Facebook ads?

This is a simple question with a complex answer. I'll break down my answer in a few parts:

Can you take CTR to the Bank?
Why You'd Want to Intentionally Want a Low CTR (sometimes).
CTR is Relative to Your Competition.
Some General Rules of Thumb for Ad Engagement

1. Can You Take CTR to the Bank?

No, you can't. I often hear people bragging about incredible CTR's, low CPC's, or other simply wonderful non-commercial aspects of their ads. Welcome my friend to the world of: Vanity Metrics. A vanity metric is something that may make your ads look good, but actually have only indirect relationship to actual commercial success.

You can't go to the bank with a great CTR. I can write the most juicy, engaging, and seductive ad in the universe, achieving a Zeus-Like CTR of 100%, but if no one buys anything: It would be more Achilles' Heel than Lightning Bolt. My time spent optimize just for CTR would be a poor investment of my time.

ROAS: Return on Ad Spend: the only metric you need.

In the world of PPC metrics, only one matters: How much money you made from your ads, and how much they cost. This can be represented by ROAS (Return on ad spend), which is (Revenue from ads - cost) / cost. Or cost over revenue (cost / revenue). Or revenue over cost (revenue / cost). In any discussion of any metric, make sure you are optimizing for ROAS, not CTR. Chasing CTR without attention to ROAS is a fool's errand, because CTR has only an indirect link to ROAS.

2. Why You'd Want to Tank Your CTR Sometimes.

When you pay for ads in an oCPM or CPM manner, a high CTR is fantastic. It means you're getting more clicks, for less money. If you pay 1 dollar for 1,000 impressions, you absolutely want as many clicks with those 1,000 impressions, because your cost doesn't change if 1,000 people click or 1 person clicks. That's great, but what about the bottom line?

What's better, bidding oCPM and getting a 5% CTR with a ROAS of 200%, or bidding CPC, getting a 1% CTR with an ROAS of 400%. Hopefully you know the answer here.

Let's say you're targeting dentists with FB Ads. You offer marketing services and want new clients. You could write a really great ad about a story of a dentist who gets 100 new patients a month. You get a huge CTR, but you realize you're getting a lot of low quality leads, maybe from dental students, or dental hygienists who can't make the executive decisions the actual head of practice can make. It's fine if your goal is branding and awareness, it's not great if you're trying to convert sales. High CTR, potentially bad ROAS.

Alternatively, what if we included the terms: "Attention Dentists" or "Running a Dental Practice?" As long as you are obeying FB ad guidelines, you can pre-qualify anyone from clicking on your ad in the first place. Leaving all the non-dentsits from being interested in your ad. Low CTR, high ROAS.

The classic example of this is including price, to prevent those people who aren't willing to spend that much on a product from converting.

3. CTR is Very Relative.

Let's start with very real situations:

I got a CTR of 10% one time. Is that good? Not if my competition was getting 15%.
I got a CTR of 5% on my retargeting ads, and 1% on my interests campaign. Is that bad? Let's discuss!

On FB, there are so many different layers.

Interest targeting
Interest + friends of fan targeting
Interest + friends of fan + behavioral (like home value over 500,000)
Retargeting
Retargeting users who have visited your checkout page
Lookalikes to visitors
lookalike to customers
Email list
Top of sales funnel lead generation
Bottom of Sales Funnel "Close" ads
the list goes on...

What's my point? If you expect the same CTR across all your ads and campaigns,....well, don't. Just like I wouldn't expect my AdWords branded CTR to be the same as a one word competitive term, don't expect the same CTR across the board.

4. Some Rules of Thumb for FB CTR (Since you asked).

Again, a suitable CTR is an indirect measure of success. assuming you have a healthy ROAS, you'll want to attract more people to your landing page.

This is where CTR is useful, when you are trying to use it to increase your ROAS, not using it to start obtaining an ROAS.

If you have a CTR of less than 1% on the newsfeed, it's time to work on your ad.
If you have a CTR of less than 0.5% on the Right-Hand-Side (RHS), it's time to work on your ad.
If you have a CTR of less than 3% with a multi-product ad, it's time to work on your ad.
In my experience, an average CTR on the newsfeed is 2%, and average CTR on the RHS is about 0.75%, average CTR of a multi-product ad is about 5%.
When you increase the relationship (interest to lookalike to retargeting) You should expect an CTR increase of at least one. i.e. If i get a 1% CTR from same ad being served to cold traffic in an interest campaign, I should try to see 2% from a lookalike campaign, and a 3% in a retargeting campaign. That said, what are you doing running the same ad to all these different people?

Bonus: #5: What you start with, shouldn't be what you end with.

If your starting CTR on day 1 is the same as your CTR on the 5th day of running the ad is the same, you're doing it wrong. Everyday, you should be going in there and pausing poor performing ad copy, images, headlines, etc. Because PPC isn't about perfection, it's about improvement.

Top 10 Best Social Media Marketing and Content marketing Strategy in 2015

Leveraging the power of content and social media marketing can help elevate your audience and customer base in a dramatic way. But getting started without any previous experience or insight could be challenging.

It is vital that you understand social media marketing fundamentals. From maximizing quality to increasing your online entry points, abiding by these 10 laws will help build a foundation that will serve your customers, your brand and - perhaps most importantly - your bottom line.

1. The Strategy of Listening


Success with social media and content marketing requires more listening and less talking. Read your target audience's online content and join discussions to learn what is important to them. Only then can you create content and spark conversations that add value rather than clutter to their lives.


2. The Strategy of Focus

It is better to specialize than to be a jack-of-all-trades. A highly-focused social media and content marketing strategy intended to build a strong brand has a better chance for success than a broad strategy that attempts to be all things to all people.


3. The Strategy of Quality


Quality trumps quantity. It is better to have 1,000 online connections who read, share and talk about your content with their own audiences than 10,000 connections who disappear after connecting with you the first time.

4. The Strategy of Patience


Social media and content marketing success does not happen overnight. While it is possible to catch lightning in a bottle, it is far more likely that you will need to commit to the long haul to achieve results.



5. The Strategy of Compounding



If you publish amazing, quality content and work to build your online audience of quality followers, they will share it with their own audiences on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, their own blogs and more.



6. The Strategy of Influence



Spend time finding the online influencers in your market who have quality audiences and are likely to be interested in your products, services and business. Connect with those people and work to build relationships with them.


If you get on their radar as an authoritative, interesting source of useful information, they might share your content with their own followers, which could put you and your business in front of a huge new audience.

7. The Strategy of Value


If you spend all your time on the social Web directly promoting your products and services, people will stop listening. You must add value to the conversation. Focus less on conversions and more on creating amazing content and developing relationships with online influencers. In time, those people will become a powerful catalyst for word-of-mouth marketing for your business.



8. The Strategy of Acknowledgment

You would not ignore someone who reaches out to you in person so don't ignore them online. Building relationships is one of the most important parts of social media marketing success, so always acknowledge every person who reaches out to you.



9. The Strategy of Accessibility


Do not publish your content and then disappear. Be available to your audience. That means you need to consistently publish content and participate in conversations. Followers online can be fickle and they would not hesitate to replace you if you disappear for weeks or months.

10. The Strategy of Reciprocity


You can not expect others to share your content and talk about you if you do not do the same for them. So, a portion of the time you spend on social media should be focused on sharing and talking about content published by others.







Source :  Thanks to jabalpurdirectory and google for pics.

Facebook Marketing Strategy - Social media marketing Strategies 2015

Facebook Marketing Strategy - Social media marketing Strategies 2015

Facebook is the world’s largest social media network with a shopping 900 million + active users. It is feasible for businesses to market their products and services on Facebook. Following a marketing strategy that could earn reasonable results would be a dream come true. This post would discuss the essentials of Facebook Marketing Strategy.
Facebook Marketing Strategy with measurable results

Why Choose Facebook?
You should choose Facebook as it is the world’s most accessed Social media. It has its presence in over 213 countries of the world with people accessing the social platform from Europe,Asia, NorthAmerica,South America,Africa and Australia. Marketers can make use of enormous data available on Facebook which includes geographical location,interests,Gender,mobile users etc. Where else can you find such a vast amount of user data compiled by locations and interests? It is the most preferred source of marketing channel for businesses.

Facebook Marketing
Facebook Marketing
(Image Source:- Webmasteradvance)


The Facebook Platform
Launched in February 2004, and created by Marc Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew Mc Collum, Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes;Facebook has since became one of the most accessed site on the internet. Initially started as a networking platform for Harvard Students, Facebook has grown into a full fledged social networking site providing users a good platform to share their content which may include text, images, videos and other media.

Facebook gives you the ability to create your profile and start making friends. The platform has options for creating Pages, Groups and Events. You can use these channels to promote your products and services.

Create Notes for your Marketing Plan
Before any campaign is started, proper forecasting should be done. You need to prepare notes for your marketing plan in order to implement it successfully. Some questions which you need to answer are given below:-
1-      What are your business goals?
2-      Who are your audience?
3-      What is your target market?
4-      Do you want to build your online reputation?
5-      Do you want to increase your brand awareness?
6-      What are your business keywords?
7-      What are your conversion channels?
8-      What is your online advertising budget?
9-      What does your Fans like the most?
10-   How to integrate applications with Facebook Pages?
11-  Which applications can help you in the smooth flow of your communications?

Creating a Facebook Page

You must have a Facebook Profile, before you can create a Facebook Page. If you have a profile, then you must visit any Facebook Page and click on Create a Page to get a page for your business. Here are the steps to creating a Page:-


1-      Log in to Facebook and visit:- www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

2-      Choose a category for your page.

3-      Add any image or your company logo.

4-      Add some info about your company or business.

5-      Start updating your status.

Creating Facebook Groups or Events



1-      Log in to Facebook.

2-       Click on “Create a group” after visiting any existing group on Facebook.

3-      Name your group

4-      Invite your friends to your group.
5-      Check “Open” if you want to let anyone see the contents of the group else choose closed or secret.
6-      Provide a description for your group.
7-      Provide a name for the email id.
8-      Upload photo and choose category.
9-      You are ready to invite other members and start your discussion.


Adding Applications to your Page

Facebook provides you with innumerable applications which you may use for the success of your business.
Getting Likes for your Fan Page


Top 10 Strategies
1-Know your audience- The very first step in successful marketing strategy is knowing your audience. Facebook provides you with data where you can easily find out your ideal audience to target based on the georgraphical location, gender, age and interests.

2- Create a nice Landing Page- Remember, your targeted audiences would visit your Facebook Page to know more about your company and its products or services. Having a nice landing page would make them understand your company in a better way. The motto of “First impression is the last impression” would work best here.

3- Post Quality Content- Your fans have liked you because they think you are a source of useful information about their interests. It’s your responsibility to share constant updates about your company’s products, various activities, images, content and any other media which your fans may find interesting.

4- Turn on Discussions- Every post created by you should have some scope for further discussions. The more discussions, the more user engagement and the more user engagement, the more the chances of your page coming in the eyes of new audiences to increase your target market.

5- Keep your fans engaged- Start a contest and let your fans remain engaged with your brand in one way or the other.

6- Get more Likes- This is the measure of the popularity of the business. Hence, getting more likes adds to the reputation and popularity of the business.

7- Use Applications- These are your real friends in the online world of marketing. Your business pages needs them to actively promote your services infront of your audiences.

8- Follow Ettiquettes- You must follow several social media ettiquettes while prmoting your brand on these popular social marketing channels.

9- Daily Hour Approach- You must spend at least one hour of your time on a daily basis to promote your serives. This daily hour approach can go a long time to popularize your brand.

10- Maintaining the Edgerank- Edgerank is similar to Google's Pagrank and it measures the post popularity. You need to keep an eye on the Edgerank in order to gain more visibility in front of your targeted audiences. Edgerank depends upon time decay factor, weight factor and the engagement factor.

11- Measuring the Success- The last but not the least is the measurement of the success of the campaign. There are several online tools which can help you to measure the audience engagement and finally your return on investment (ROI). This is important as the money spent should be taken care of and the full utilization should be made.



Source : seosandwitch.com  thnaks.....