It’s just not that easy I’m afraid. With increasing competition online and growing sophistication in how search engines display their results, research and planning is absolutely paramount to a successful online strategy. The introduction of blended search, personalised search, social search and real-time search demand a much more holistic approach to search engine optimisation (SEO); an approach that combines traditional activities, such as keyword selection and link building, with more contemporary tactics in social media and content marketing.

But a more holistic and sophisticated approach to SEO in turn demands a greater focus on research and planning. Research is essential in providing insight, focus and direction for your digital marketing strategy. Planning ensures your digital strategy is aligned with your objectives, internal time and resource, offline marketing and budget.

So with this in mind, what do we suggest you look at as part of a detailed research and planning phase? Well, here’s an insight into a few of the things we focus on during the first few weeks of a new project, and review at regular intervals thereafter:

Competitor analysis

For any new project, we ask a client who they consider to be the their key competitors. We then analyse the online marketing activity of these competitors, including SEO efforts, Paid Search campaigns, content and social media. By carrying out analysis of your competitors it provides insight, focus and direction for your own online efforts. Have you ever heard the saying, ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer?’ That’s why you need to analyse the competitive space and know exactly what you’re up against before you get started.

Prospects and customers

A number of sophisticated tools allow you to discover where your prospects and customers spend their time online, what they talk about and how they interact with one another, as well as who influences their purchasing decisions. This research allows you to create a community map; a visual representation of the websites, blogs, forums and social networks where your target audience is most active. In turn, this map dictates where you need to be pushing content along with the social media tools, such as Twitter, that you need to use to engage with your prospects, customers and those people who influence them.

It’s also well worth scouring the web for published research, reports and studies on the audience you are targeting. For example, if you’re market is 17-25 year olds there is bound to be some freely available research that provides insight their use of the Internet, such as the social networks they frequent most regularly. If not, you may even consider commissioning your own research!

Content brainstorming

The research that goes into creating a community map will highlight the problems, issues and concerns faced by your target audience. Analysing a number of your key competitors will also highlight where you can gain an advantage by creating content they may not have considered or by bettering what they are already doing. It is therefore important to audit the content you already have (digital assets) and then brainstorm new content ideas that may include additional resources on your website, articles, press releases, blog posts, images, video and audio. Creating and marketing content on an ongoing basis is essential in making your website a stronger resource, building authority and in entering social spaces with something of real value to the target audience.

Site architecture planning

One of the most important elements of creating a great website is information architecture. A site that is well organised and intuitive will set the foundations for search engine rankings, as well as benefiting visitors to your website with a clear and intuitive path to the point of conversion.

In researching new content ideas it is important to plan how this content will be integrated into your website. During the research and planning stage it is therefore a good idea to map out your existing website and then, on the basis of continually adding new content, also map out where you expect the site to be in say, 3, 6 and 12 months time. This helps to provide direction and a clear goal of what you are working towards, therefore forming the basis of a content schedule.

Link research

In-bound links to your website from other sites of relevance and quality is a crucial factor in determining how well your website ranks on the major search engines, as well as driving traffic and increasing online awareness of your business.

Activity in content marketing and social media will yield links to your website but it’s a good idea to spend time researching specific websites, such as directories, organisations and industry bodies that you would ideally like a link from. Once you have your list you can then figure out the best way of gaining a link, be it a direct request, the offer of content, product trials or dare we say it, hard cash!

Benchmarking and setting up of reporting/tracking solutions

Traffic driven to your website from search engines, social media activity and content marketing should be measured by its impact on revenue. Search engine rankings and traffic alone are not appropriate measures of success for your digital marketing efforts; instead focus on conversions to calculate ROI and therefore the impact on your bottom line. At the research and planning stage consider the tools you need to use to measure ROI before setting realistic benchmarks and targets based on the research you have carried out above.

In summary, what I am trying to demonstrate is that when it comes to implementing a successful digital marketing strategy you can’t just jump straight in. Research and careful planning will allow you to maximise your reach, targeted traffic, online conversion rates, levels of customer retention, as well as the number of brand advocates. In an increasingly complex and competitive online space, meeting these objectives doesn’t just happen. Don’t abandon the thinking and methods you would usually adopt when investing your budget offline because although many so called SEO agencies and ‘consultants’ will fall over themselves to tell you so, there are no magic formulas when it comes to achieving long term, sustained success online.

Some of these systems allow you to take control of your profile, and edit and update it. The business models used by these sites can also be interesting. Some are free, and offer premium services for an extra fee. Some only allow you to take control of your profile for a fee. The information collated on the site may include details that are correct or incorrect; and the information may be current or out of date.

One that I have registered with is ZoomInfo, which allows me to log in and take control of my profile free of charge. I have been able to clean up the information there – although more info of dubious accuracy is added from time to time, and my name has also appeared on a separate profile. (Some of the changes I made today may still take some time to appear on the site!) This site also keeps cached copy of the content that they found my name in – some of which is now up to four years old, and no longer exists at the original site. I have no control over what they keep in their cache.

This has mostly been a positive experience, although I don’t remember seeing a lot of security to stop anyone else (whether of the same name or not) taking control of a profile.

I did once have a similar experience with a site called “Spock”, which seems to now have been subsumed into “Intelius“, purporting to be “The world’s largest and most accurate public record source.” Although this does still provide links to some relevant sites on the search results, it no longer gives me any control over a profile, and all of the “more detail” links refer to a name only vaguely like mine, and all results are within the USA. This seems to me to be a rather limited view of “the world” – as I understand it, the USA only accounts for 4.5% of the world’s population. However, for those in the USA, the sort of information stored here can supposedly include criminal records and “background checks”, which you have no apparent control over.

This trend highlights the great benefit of occasionally searching for your own name on the net – that’s how I found out about ZoomInfo. It’s worth occasionally finding out what others are saying about you online. However, this is easy for someone with a name like mine – a Scottish first name and a French surname. So far as I know, I am still the only “Keith De La Rue” on the net. I pity all the “John Smiths” out there, and those with names of similar popularity of other ethnicities. (The secret is to choose your parents wisely – or change your name!)

The appearance of sites that gather personal info without allowing you any control is a disturbing trend. Given the nature of the Internet, I don’t see that an awful lot that can be done to directly stop it. I don’t believe that there is any particular “authority” that can regulate this somewhat unethical behaviour globally. Would Identity 2.0 help?

In the meantime, I believe that it is worth taking control of your own online identity on these systems where possible, provided that you are not exposing yourself to other forms of unethical behaviour when you do.

Without wanting to make light of the topic, I wonder if there will be a trend in future to give children more unique names to help them to have a globally unique online identity? Maybe ICANN should take a role in personal names as well?

Research firm Gartner predicts facebook will have over 1 Billion users by 2011.

There are 1.73 Billion internet users in the world today.

The latest Nielsen stats indicate that users spend more time on facebook than Google, Yahoo, Youtube, Bing, Wikipedia and Amazon combined.

These numbers are giving google the jitters. So much so they released their best attempt yet at social media a few weeks ago.

The question is - if people had the opportunity to ask their friends, people they trust and know personally for information and get extremely relevant answers back - why would they use Google, a mechanical, impersonal, algorithm driven search engine?

I recently read an interesting article from Jay Deragon about social media ROI:

”People and businesses don’t like spending time and money without defining the return on their efforts. At the same time people and businesses engage in non-productive activities without even considering an ROI on those activities. So one must ask why do they think social media activities will produce an ROI? The reason is that social media has become in vogue and everyone seems to want to capture value from it rather than with it.”

Community strategist, Connie Benson laid out the following list in her blog entitled 2010 The Year of Social Media ROI:

1. Companies will expect ROI from their Social Media efforts.

Social Media will shift from being experimental to mainstream. Larger organizations can’t justify embracing it without having it meeting their business objectives. It has to increase their bottom line.

2. The Social Media Specialist (Community Manager) position will become mainstream.

Companies are going to quickly find that they need someone to guide their efforts externally and internally. Social efforts should be extended across the board.

3. Cultural shift inside of companies.

This is going to be a challenge for many companies. In order to be successful in connecting with customers, organizations are going to have to have communications channels in place and the openness to utilize the information. Management is going to need to have a level of trust for their employees interacting online and understand that the risk can be mitigated by education & training.

4. Social Media Monitoring will be a necessary component

My colleague, John Tonini, made the prediction earlier this year that the market would shift from brands wondering if they should be monitoring social media to ‘What tool should we be using?’. 2010 will see a huge shift in the adoption rate of social media monitoring.

5. Agencies and companies will hire data analysts

A new position is emerging. My favorite title is Social Media Metrician. Social Media monitoring tools don’t drive themselves. They need more than a human touch. They require people who enjoy digging into the analytics aspect, looking for patterns and trends. Web analytics people will be able to expand on their roles. Brands and agencies are going to need this new specialized position to drive their marketing intelligence. Marshall Sponder lists many predictions in regard to the role of the data analyst in 2010.

6. Integration of platforms and processes will be critical.

I think there are key indicators that social media is working for an organization and certainly things need to be measured regularly. But for those of you who don’t believe in social media ROI, there are a few things to consider. Amber Naslund writes on metrics and social media often. On January 27, 2010, she says the following about practical social media measurement:

"One of the chief things that managers seem to want is the ability to draw lines and connect dots between their social media participation and sales (or other conversion metrics). There are two ways to do that, and one is much more difficult than the other.

Cause and Correlation

First is attribution or direct cause, which would indicate that the social media initative is the sales channel itself. Much like Dell claiming that it has reaped millions in sales via their Twitter channel, here you’re saying that your endeavors in one channel or another are the primary driver for a particular revenue stream. The tricky bit here is that a) there will *always* be external factors that influence sales transactions and b) you have to track and control how you output information in these specific channels in order to accurately attribute the revenue.

The second and more realistic way to track the impact of social media on revenue is by correlation. In other words, you track your sales in aggregate, or perhaps in the more global online environment (inclusive of your website and how leads funnel into your pipeline through the web overall).

Then, you overlay trends in your online activity – say, the establishment of your community or the building of your blog – and look at them alongside your sales activity. If they go up together, you can indicate a positive correlation, or the likelihood that the social media stuff is helping to drive the sales. If social media activity goes up but the sales stay flat or go down, something isn’t working, or the social media bit isn’t effective from a sales standpoint.

Likewise, correlation can also be in *ratios*, so for example, a $50,000 investment in social media (including time, money, or both) correlates with a $25,000 increase in sales over the same time period. Note that this is NOT precise ROI, because you’re talking an investment in a single channel against TOTAL sales. But you can look at the proportion in sales or lead traffic increase over the time period in which you track your social media activities, and extract a relationship between the two."

Where do you stand on this subject? What is your organisation noticing as you participate more and more in the everyday activity of business and personal? Have you noticed the correlation that Amber spoke about? Or have you taken time to consider the up and coming positions and responsibilities that Connie spoke of? What are your thoughts on social media ROI?

We opted for a strategy that came to be known as a Syndicated Network Strategy.

Firstly we identified each of the branded properties they had online, then assigned each of them a role.

Online Store - EXECUTOR - Online retail store. Final selection and purchasing point.

Blog - INFLUENCER - Sets brand trends to consumers. Consumer influencer. Content rich news source.

facebook - DISTRIBUTOR - Live community of brand advocates. Content disrtibution channel with mass reach & exposure.

myspace - ENTERTAINER - Hosts events, competitons. Primarily an entertainment channel.

We then factored these four properties into a sustainable ecosystem.

The primary goals of the ecosystem was to

a) Expose consumers to branded content through social media channels

b) Get consumers to engage with the branded content

c) Position the properties so that when a consumer engages the branded content, a significant flow on or ripple effect occurs through other social channels (network syndication) to generate mass exposure and awareness to previously unconnected consumers.

d) Encourage mass consumer flow between each property by providing consumers with deeplinks to and from each property frequently (network syndication).

Direct traffic drives - facebook feeds a majority of traffic to both the blog and the online store. We do this by pushing linked updates at predetermined times. Consumers click on these links through their facebook feeds and get connected to the blog or the online store. Same applies to the blog itself. Once a user clicks a link within a blog post, they will be connected to the page on the online store where the purchased item is displayed.

Engagement, Content exposure drives (network syndication) - Both the blog and the online store are equiped with facebook connect. When a user buys an item through the online store, they are asked if they would like to share this news with their friends through facebook. Once the user accepts, a linked update will appear on that users profile wall. That linked update will now also appear on most of that users friends newsfeeds, thereby creating organic brand exposure and a linked traffic gateway for hundreds (possibly thousands) of consumers straight back to the online store.

When a user comments on a blog post, they will be prompted to share this information with their friends through facebook as a linked update. Same thing applies here as it does with the online store. A link to the blog post will now appear in that users friends newsfeeds exposing them to the article, their friends comment and a deeplink back to the article itself.

With the proper social connections and content drivers syndicated across the brands online network, traffic and engagement create themselves.

Its about consumers working for the brand, not the brand working for consumers - thats what social media is all about, right?

To tie into my main point, does this qualify as social media strategy that helps faciliate growth and awareness around our clients new online store or are we way off?