Many companies are using social networks to connect with customers, but connecting with customers doesn’t necessarily equate to increasing sales. David Camp, head of marketing for AmazonWireless, claims that financial returns from social media investment have been slow and that he hasn’t found social media tools to be efficient at converting traffic into sales.
However, Kim Johnston, vice president of marketing at Parallels, argues that return of investment doesn’t have to come in monetary form – it can also lead to insight. She said that Parallels (which makes virtualization software for Macintoshes) learns a lot from customers via Facebook and Twitter.
Making use of customer feedback streams can be the most difficult part of utilising an effective social media campaign. T-Mobile, for instance, monitors social networks to gain insights that could benefit product development but Alex Samano, general manager for Bobsled (a T-Mobile VoIP product) warns that “you have to be cautious of what you’re hearing,” as not every comment will represent the majority of your customer base.
Currently, turning social media popularity into sales can be tricky. Building relationships and creating a community of consumers, however, are made much simpler. Use this opportunity to listen to what customers want from your business and you can gain much more than a return of your investment; you can gain a thriving fanbase that could ensure the future of your business. Ten years ago, it was common to pay £100,000 to get a focus group of customers together. These days, fans are almost desperate for their opinions to be heard.

“The ROI of social media is that your Business will still exist in 2015.”
- Gary Vaynerchuk, video blogger, co-owner and director of operations of a wine retail store and an author and public speaker on the subjects of social media, brand building and e-commerce.

Social Media is an emerging tool for speeding up a website’s indexing. One can use social media links to speed up the indexing of websites. Interesting fact is that Search Engines consider these links by social media even if the links are not followed. Hence, it can be said that social media buzz functions as an important indicator for search engines. However, an important question arises here, does social media buzz disturbs the rankings directly?

Danny Sullivan had a short interview with search engines, in which he asked if the data, which comes from social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, are used as an indication and whether it influences the usual search results. Both search engines- Google and Bing- answered in the affirmative and stated that they not only consider the data, but also scrutinize and assess the authority of the author and the quality of the post.

Here is an excerpt of the hottest question answered in the interview:

So how do Google and Bing evaluate the Social Media Buzz?

One thing needs to be clear at the outset that the focus should not be only on social media. The fact of buzz affecting the ranking does not make it the most important cause for higher ranking. Both the search engines stated the limits of effects of buzz on ranking, as they properly calculate and perform computation to filter out spam.

Even then, as our uncertainties cleared, we can easily reflect on the keys, which are used to assess Social Media Buzz by Search Engines. For example, we can say that the prime target of search engines is to filter out the spam, guarantee the popularity of the page, asses the trust and authority of the links, authentication of author and to get a pointer regarding the topic or theme of the post.

There are certain attributes, which can influence the essence of the social media links. These attributes are listed below; but please note that these attributes are not confirmed officially by Search Engines.

However, several web services and tools have used most of them to examine Social Media popularity:

1. The number of Followers on Twitter
2. The number of Fans on Facebook Fan Pages
3. The number of tweets & RTs on Twitter
4. The number of Shares & Likes on Facebook
5. The ratio between Followers-Friends
6. The authority of the people that follow you
7. The authority of the people that share your content
8. The average quality of your previously shared messages
9. The number of unique mentions/shares (similar to Link Diversity)
10. The rate and the source of links that you share

In addition, it is liable that search engines use Social Media buzz to resolve:

• The freshness of a particular post
• The validity/usefulness and update of a page
• The current trends
• The particular terms related to a particular post. They are expected to use the keywords and the hash tags, which are found in the subject matter of the shared messages.
• Each Author’s expertise and theme. Experts are those users who post high quality messages on a particular topic. Search Engine- Bing is already using this trait by suggesting users on Twitter.

Conclusion

The popularity of Social Media can be gauged from the numbers of people who are plugged in to various social media sites. On the other hand, Search Engines have made many deals with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in the past to include social media results in their SERPs. Therefore, the news of buzz serving as a signal is not new for the industry, as we all assumed its use to resolve trends, authority, popularity etc. Concluding we are looking for more information and indications regarding the importance of certain attributes.

Neil came to see us after having a really bad experience with a Manchester based SEO firm that optimised his rust buster website for keywords that will never get him any traffic. Neil now plans to build and grow Plumbingsuppliesdirect.co.uk. We are really pleased to announce Neil is on board as a customer, he is a great guy and really deserves success. We had a three hour meeting with him and after it we were all supercharged to help Neil take over the online plumbing supplies industry.

Neil realises he has alot of hard work to to get this up and running, but I am so glad he found SEO Next and was not led down the garden path by another krank internet marketing firm.

Facebook has made Google a little hot under the collar today by making the purchase of FriendFeed, a content sharing service.

Many didn’t expect Facebook to buy this company as many expected it would be a done deal for either Google or the Phoenix from the flames “Twitter” which has took the internet world by storm with its real time search engine. 

Real time search is something of a phenomena and Facebook is fast on the heels of Google because senior people within that company know that the real money is in real time search!

Facebook have used Friendfeed for some time now as their R&D department.  With Facebook unable to acquire Twitter, they saw this as the next best opportunity and have ceased it with both hands. 

This partnership of Friendfeed and Facebook is set to send shock waves in the search engine optimisation industry as the powerful and intelligent technology behind them both is sure to change the face of search in the not to distant future, allowing users to aggregate things and search in real time….not when Google decides to rank things!