The ways that consumers initiate their digital experiences and engage with brands are evolving. For the last 10 years, search engines reigned supreme as the way users navigated their online travels. But social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are encroaching on the search engines' dominance as an entryway to the internet and brands.SEM and social media: Bridging engagement and performance
Like SEO, SEM is an effective means for extending and complementing social media efforts. Coordinating SEM and social media strategies ensures that marketers are able to capitalize when the buzz generated from various social media platforms drives users to engage with search engines.
Consumer interaction and engagement are at the core of social media, and this is where brand insights and trends can emerge. While search engines are incorporating real-time information from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, it is important for brand marketers and agencies to examine the consumer-generated content in terms of insights and trends that they can potentially layer into their search (as well as display) media strategies.
Just as the use of SEO and SEM can help validate a brand, the integration of SEM and social media results can help increase relevancy and validate brand and consumer values by recognizing their interactions in the social sphere and continuing the "relationship" on brand properties. The social space is all about creating brand fans by forging relationships with consumers and providing them with opportunities to engage in more robust ways than more traditional two-dimensional digital media tactics (like paid search and display) can achieve.
The search engine space is about providing relevant results to what the consumer is looking for. Creating bridges between the two strategies based on content data, trends, and insights helps foster post-social-engagement, deepen brand relationships, and facilitate the conversion process.
Putting all the pieces together
Creating a holistic digital media campaign is the ultimate goal, because it allows brands to close the loop between social engagement, which spurs brand affinity and customer retention, and search engine marketing, which is the most common way users start down a conversion path.
Noticing how the various channels affect one another is the critical first path to success. While SEO and social media are structured around long-term strategies, SEM is typically more focused on the short-term conversion-based path.
The ways that consumers initiate their digital experiences and engage with brands are evolving. For the last 10 years, search engines reigned supreme as the way users navigated their online travels. But social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are encroaching on the search engines' dominance as an entryway to the internet and brands.
As technology advances and consumers continue to evolve digitally, their online behavior changes -- it's up to marketers to follow suit if they want to reach and engage with their desired consumer base. Marketers must look at ways to integrate and optimize their digital marketing and media mix to reach and engage with consumers while supporting their business goals. This article will explore ways in which the social and search channels can work together to optimize both conversion performance and consumer engagement with your brand.
Social media and SEO: Finding common ground
Social media and search engine optimization (SEO) have competing goals. One aims to pull users to a designated website, while the other enables and encourages conversations and interactions on third-party properties. To unite these two goals, marketers need to find the common ground between the two, which is the content created and shared between marketers and consumers.
Using social media marketing and search engine optimization together enables marketers to capitalize on instances in which social interactions become search queries. In this era of real-time search results, the ability to capture this intersection point is of growing importance. Consider the use of Twitter. Users who follow more than a handful of people (and brands) will likely have difficulty recalling a message or sponsored tweet. In search of information, consumers typically turn to search engines. If you don't have a search engine marketing plan in place to capture the users exposed to your social media efforts, you're missing valuable opportunities.
The beauty of social media is that it inherently creates sound bites and memorable slogans; for example, if you're running a promotion via a social platform, you want to anticipate the keywords consumers are going to use in their queries and build the appropriate website content needed to stay relevant for those search terms.
SEO and SEM: Enhancing synergies
The connections between SEO and paid search are solid. Beyond their proximity in search engine results pages, the two work together to build relevancy for consumer queries. For example, if a consumer is searching for "Brand X Widget Y" and they see both paid and unpaid results, they are reassured that those links relate to their query and will lead them to the most relevant page.
When the two strategies work together, they also provide marketers the opportunity to direct users in a highly targeted manner. Depending on the product or service query, it might make more sense to lead consumers through a higher funnel process page (such as a homepage). In other instances, it might make more sense to send users to a page that enables a deeper product or service experience. Using both paid and organic search strategies together enables marketers to cover all the bases by supporting various approaches in information seeking and/or purchase decisions differently while serving as way to build their SEO reputation in the process.
In strategically viewing and planning these three channels together for both the long- and short-term, marketers and agencies will be able to see gaps and anticipate opportunities to influence results. While integrated strategies are planned in advance of a campaign or initiative, certain levers of paid search and social media can be adjusted "in market" to respond to evolving consumer behavior and preferences. Search and social platforms can be utilized not only to map and respond to trends, but also to reevaluate SEO strategies to ensure performance traction is gained and present at the search engine level.
What lies ahead for digital media campaigns?
Industry experts are touting 2010 as the year of mobile. With the continued adoption of 3G devices and advances in technology, we see tremendous opportunity for brands to build connection points with consumers on this platform. Social media is proving to be the most readily adopted digital media channel in the mobile space by consumers. It is no surprise that the marketing platforms and extensions for brands are following.
Mobile forum applications like Foursquare show that users are embracing the opportunity to update their profiles or announce their locations to their social followers, so brands should seek to position and integrate the right message at the right time and place (or in the right context).
While other forms of mobile marketing, such as search, are not as widely adopted, people still seek information on the go. So, while SEO and SEM may be overshadowed by the lure of apps and other slicker forms of mobile advertising, the search components of mobile should be considered part of the overall strategy, just as mobile is an extension of the digital platform.
Vanessa Newkirk is VP of media services for Geary Interactive.
Thursday, 29 April 2010
Gasta Tech Update: Vanessa Newkirk
The ways that consumers initiate their digital experiences and engage with brands are evolving. For the last 10 years, search engines reigned supreme as the way users navigated their online travels. But social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are encroaching on the search engines' dominance as an entryway to the internet and brands.SEM and social media: Bridging engagement and performance
Like SEO, SEM is an effective means for extending and complementing social media efforts. Coordinating SEM and social media strategies ensures that marketers are able to capitalize when the buzz generated from various social media platforms drives users to engage with search engines.
Consumer interaction and engagement are at the core of social media, and this is where brand insights and trends can emerge. While search engines are incorporating real-time information from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, it is important for brand marketers and agencies to examine the consumer-generated content in terms of insights and trends that they can potentially layer into their search (as well as display) media strategies.
Just as the use of SEO and SEM can help validate a brand, the integration of SEM and social media results can help increase relevancy and validate brand and consumer values by recognizing their interactions in the social sphere and continuing the "relationship" on brand properties. The social space is all about creating brand fans by forging relationships with consumers and providing them with opportunities to engage in more robust ways than more traditional two-dimensional digital media tactics (like paid search and display) can achieve.
The search engine space is about providing relevant results to what the consumer is looking for. Creating bridges between the two strategies based on content data, trends, and insights helps foster post-social-engagement, deepen brand relationships, and facilitate the conversion process.
Putting all the pieces together
Creating a holistic digital media campaign is the ultimate goal, because it allows brands to close the loop between social engagement, which spurs brand affinity and customer retention, and search engine marketing, which is the most common way users start down a conversion path.
Noticing how the various channels affect one another is the critical first path to success. While SEO and social media are structured around long-term strategies, SEM is typically more focused on the short-term conversion-based path.
The ways that consumers initiate their digital experiences and engage with brands are evolving. For the last 10 years, search engines reigned supreme as the way users navigated their online travels. But social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are encroaching on the search engines' dominance as an entryway to the internet and brands.
As technology advances and consumers continue to evolve digitally, their online behavior changes -- it's up to marketers to follow suit if they want to reach and engage with their desired consumer base. Marketers must look at ways to integrate and optimize their digital marketing and media mix to reach and engage with consumers while supporting their business goals. This article will explore ways in which the social and search channels can work together to optimize both conversion performance and consumer engagement with your brand.
Social media and SEO: Finding common ground
Social media and search engine optimization (SEO) have competing goals. One aims to pull users to a designated website, while the other enables and encourages conversations and interactions on third-party properties. To unite these two goals, marketers need to find the common ground between the two, which is the content created and shared between marketers and consumers.
Using social media marketing and search engine optimization together enables marketers to capitalize on instances in which social interactions become search queries. In this era of real-time search results, the ability to capture this intersection point is of growing importance. Consider the use of Twitter. Users who follow more than a handful of people (and brands) will likely have difficulty recalling a message or sponsored tweet. In search of information, consumers typically turn to search engines. If you don't have a search engine marketing plan in place to capture the users exposed to your social media efforts, you're missing valuable opportunities.
The beauty of social media is that it inherently creates sound bites and memorable slogans; for example, if you're running a promotion via a social platform, you want to anticipate the keywords consumers are going to use in their queries and build the appropriate website content needed to stay relevant for those search terms.
SEO and SEM: Enhancing synergies
The connections between SEO and paid search are solid. Beyond their proximity in search engine results pages, the two work together to build relevancy for consumer queries. For example, if a consumer is searching for "Brand X Widget Y" and they see both paid and unpaid results, they are reassured that those links relate to their query and will lead them to the most relevant page.
When the two strategies work together, they also provide marketers the opportunity to direct users in a highly targeted manner. Depending on the product or service query, it might make more sense to lead consumers through a higher funnel process page (such as a homepage). In other instances, it might make more sense to send users to a page that enables a deeper product or service experience. Using both paid and organic search strategies together enables marketers to cover all the bases by supporting various approaches in information seeking and/or purchase decisions differently while serving as way to build their SEO reputation in the process.
In strategically viewing and planning these three channels together for both the long- and short-term, marketers and agencies will be able to see gaps and anticipate opportunities to influence results. While integrated strategies are planned in advance of a campaign or initiative, certain levers of paid search and social media can be adjusted "in market" to respond to evolving consumer behavior and preferences. Search and social platforms can be utilized not only to map and respond to trends, but also to reevaluate SEO strategies to ensure performance traction is gained and present at the search engine level.
What lies ahead for digital media campaigns?
Industry experts are touting 2010 as the year of mobile. With the continued adoption of 3G devices and advances in technology, we see tremendous opportunity for brands to build connection points with consumers on this platform. Social media is proving to be the most readily adopted digital media channel in the mobile space by consumers. It is no surprise that the marketing platforms and extensions for brands are following.
Mobile forum applications like Foursquare show that users are embracing the opportunity to update their profiles or announce their locations to their social followers, so brands should seek to position and integrate the right message at the right time and place (or in the right context).
While other forms of mobile marketing, such as search, are not as widely adopted, people still seek information on the go. So, while SEO and SEM may be overshadowed by the lure of apps and other slicker forms of mobile advertising, the search components of mobile should be considered part of the overall strategy, just as mobile is an extension of the digital platform.
Vanessa Newkirk is VP of media services for Geary Interactive.
Like SEO, SEM is an effective means for extending and complementing social media efforts. Coordinating SEM and social media strategies ensures that marketers are able to capitalize when the buzz generated from various social media platforms drives users to engage with search engines.
Consumer interaction and engagement are at the core of social media, and this is where brand insights and trends can emerge. While search engines are incorporating real-time information from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, it is important for brand marketers and agencies to examine the consumer-generated content in terms of insights and trends that they can potentially layer into their search (as well as display) media strategies.
Just as the use of SEO and SEM can help validate a brand, the integration of SEM and social media results can help increase relevancy and validate brand and consumer values by recognizing their interactions in the social sphere and continuing the "relationship" on brand properties. The social space is all about creating brand fans by forging relationships with consumers and providing them with opportunities to engage in more robust ways than more traditional two-dimensional digital media tactics (like paid search and display) can achieve.
The search engine space is about providing relevant results to what the consumer is looking for. Creating bridges between the two strategies based on content data, trends, and insights helps foster post-social-engagement, deepen brand relationships, and facilitate the conversion process.
Putting all the pieces together
Creating a holistic digital media campaign is the ultimate goal, because it allows brands to close the loop between social engagement, which spurs brand affinity and customer retention, and search engine marketing, which is the most common way users start down a conversion path.
Noticing how the various channels affect one another is the critical first path to success. While SEO and social media are structured around long-term strategies, SEM is typically more focused on the short-term conversion-based path.
The ways that consumers initiate their digital experiences and engage with brands are evolving. For the last 10 years, search engines reigned supreme as the way users navigated their online travels. But social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are encroaching on the search engines' dominance as an entryway to the internet and brands.
As technology advances and consumers continue to evolve digitally, their online behavior changes -- it's up to marketers to follow suit if they want to reach and engage with their desired consumer base. Marketers must look at ways to integrate and optimize their digital marketing and media mix to reach and engage with consumers while supporting their business goals. This article will explore ways in which the social and search channels can work together to optimize both conversion performance and consumer engagement with your brand.
Social media and SEO: Finding common ground
Social media and search engine optimization (SEO) have competing goals. One aims to pull users to a designated website, while the other enables and encourages conversations and interactions on third-party properties. To unite these two goals, marketers need to find the common ground between the two, which is the content created and shared between marketers and consumers.
Using social media marketing and search engine optimization together enables marketers to capitalize on instances in which social interactions become search queries. In this era of real-time search results, the ability to capture this intersection point is of growing importance. Consider the use of Twitter. Users who follow more than a handful of people (and brands) will likely have difficulty recalling a message or sponsored tweet. In search of information, consumers typically turn to search engines. If you don't have a search engine marketing plan in place to capture the users exposed to your social media efforts, you're missing valuable opportunities.
The beauty of social media is that it inherently creates sound bites and memorable slogans; for example, if you're running a promotion via a social platform, you want to anticipate the keywords consumers are going to use in their queries and build the appropriate website content needed to stay relevant for those search terms.
SEO and SEM: Enhancing synergies
The connections between SEO and paid search are solid. Beyond their proximity in search engine results pages, the two work together to build relevancy for consumer queries. For example, if a consumer is searching for "Brand X Widget Y" and they see both paid and unpaid results, they are reassured that those links relate to their query and will lead them to the most relevant page.
When the two strategies work together, they also provide marketers the opportunity to direct users in a highly targeted manner. Depending on the product or service query, it might make more sense to lead consumers through a higher funnel process page (such as a homepage). In other instances, it might make more sense to send users to a page that enables a deeper product or service experience. Using both paid and organic search strategies together enables marketers to cover all the bases by supporting various approaches in information seeking and/or purchase decisions differently while serving as way to build their SEO reputation in the process.
In strategically viewing and planning these three channels together for both the long- and short-term, marketers and agencies will be able to see gaps and anticipate opportunities to influence results. While integrated strategies are planned in advance of a campaign or initiative, certain levers of paid search and social media can be adjusted "in market" to respond to evolving consumer behavior and preferences. Search and social platforms can be utilized not only to map and respond to trends, but also to reevaluate SEO strategies to ensure performance traction is gained and present at the search engine level.
What lies ahead for digital media campaigns?
Industry experts are touting 2010 as the year of mobile. With the continued adoption of 3G devices and advances in technology, we see tremendous opportunity for brands to build connection points with consumers on this platform. Social media is proving to be the most readily adopted digital media channel in the mobile space by consumers. It is no surprise that the marketing platforms and extensions for brands are following.
Mobile forum applications like Foursquare show that users are embracing the opportunity to update their profiles or announce their locations to their social followers, so brands should seek to position and integrate the right message at the right time and place (or in the right context).
While other forms of mobile marketing, such as search, are not as widely adopted, people still seek information on the go. So, while SEO and SEM may be overshadowed by the lure of apps and other slicker forms of mobile advertising, the search components of mobile should be considered part of the overall strategy, just as mobile is an extension of the digital platform.
Vanessa Newkirk is VP of media services for Geary Interactive.
Sunday, 25 April 2010
Gasta Tech Update : Investments
Traders should remain cautious.
In an incredible show of resiliency, the markets shrugged off another threat of a deeper correction and headed once again to new highs. The bears have to be extremely frustrated by now as each bout of selling has been quickly absorbed by buyers. The bears have been unable to string together more than two days of selling for several weeks now as the markets relentlessly stair step higher. While the markets continue to climb, some market leaders, such as Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (Nasdaq:GMCR) and Amazon.com(Nasdaq:AMZN), are starting to falter. As mentioned last week, the markets are showing some negative divergences and it’s clear that this rally has been losing momentum. This is normal for a rally that has gone uncorrected for several weeks. The markets will pull back at some point, and traders should remain cautious.
The S&P 500, as represented by the S&P 500 SPDRS (NYSE:SPY), was able to get to marginal new highs on Friday, as it cleared the highs set earlier this month. Despite the strength shown in SPY by erasing last week’s distribution day, SPY appears to be in more of a consolidation than a breakout move higher. Volatility is starting to increase a bit and volume is starting to increase without significant price advance. This is typically showing distribution, so traders should remain on alert over the next few sessions. One possible level to watch is the closing relation of SPY to its 20-day moving average. SPY has respected this average recently and a close beneath it would imply weakness.
Source: StockCharts.com
The Diamonds Trust, Series 1 (NYSE:DIA) ETF, which tracks the Dow Jones Industrial Average, is showing a very similar pattern to SPY. It has managed to clear its prior highs, although not by much. DIA is sitting at new highs while its MACD indicator remains at its lowest level in several weeks. This is an example of a negative divergence, and simply points out that a trend move may be losing momentum. While this is not a reversal signal, it does warn a trader that the move is getting long in the tooth.
Source: StockCharts.com
The chart for the Powershares QQQ ETF (Nasdaq:QQQQ) is also showing a similar divergence, although it has managed to clear its prior high by a wider margin than SPY and DIA. The $50 level was the area to watch, and QQQQ was able to successfully hold this level on a weekly closing basis. Some tech leaders such as Google (Nasdaq:GOOG) and Amazon.com are beginning to lag, so traders should closely watch Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL) as the highest profile tech leader still acting strongly. If AAPL begins to falter, it would surely have an impact on QQQQ and the rest of the sector.
Source: StockCharts.com
The Russell 2000, as represented by the iShares Russell 2000 Index (NYSE:IWM) ETF, has continued to maintain its leadership role as IWM cleared its prior highs before other market index ETFs and closed well above them as well. IWM is once again much extended from its 20-day moving average and as such, traders should be cautious about entering new trades in this space right now. However, despite being overbought, IWM continues to show the strongest structure of the market index ETFs and even the negative divergence in its technical indicators is not as pronounced as the others.
Source: StockCharts.com
Bottom Line
As mentioned last week, the fallout following the Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE:GS) fraud charge was only a single distribution day until proven otherwise. The markets responded quite strongly by quickly negating the weakness and trading to new highs this week. The current rally is reminding me of the tail end of the financial crisis, when traders couldn’t believe how the market was dropping every day - only this time, the market's going up! Ultimately, the markets will need to correct, and this will likely happen when the majority of traders decide that buying the dip is foolproof. While traders should always be cautious and stick to their plans, this becomes even more important when the markets begin to trade at extremes. This is when fear of missing a move becomes most likely as traders see stocks rallying day in and day out. While it’s definitely possible that the markets can continue to rally unabated, the current environment is vulnerable to violent shakeouts, and traders should account for this in their trading plans. By sticking to high-quality setups, traders can continue to take advantage of the great market environment, while avoiding a disaster on a reversal.
By Joey Fundora
Joey Fundora is an independent trader located in South Florida. Joey focuses on using technical analysis techniques to uncover supply and demand imbalances in equities. To see more of his work, visit his site on
In an incredible show of resiliency, the markets shrugged off another threat of a deeper correction and headed once again to new highs. The bears have to be extremely frustrated by now as each bout of selling has been quickly absorbed by buyers. The bears have been unable to string together more than two days of selling for several weeks now as the markets relentlessly stair step higher. While the markets continue to climb, some market leaders, such as Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (Nasdaq:GMCR) and Amazon.com(Nasdaq:AMZN), are starting to falter. As mentioned last week, the markets are showing some negative divergences and it’s clear that this rally has been losing momentum. This is normal for a rally that has gone uncorrected for several weeks. The markets will pull back at some point, and traders should remain cautious.
The S&P 500, as represented by the S&P 500 SPDRS (NYSE:SPY), was able to get to marginal new highs on Friday, as it cleared the highs set earlier this month. Despite the strength shown in SPY by erasing last week’s distribution day, SPY appears to be in more of a consolidation than a breakout move higher. Volatility is starting to increase a bit and volume is starting to increase without significant price advance. This is typically showing distribution, so traders should remain on alert over the next few sessions. One possible level to watch is the closing relation of SPY to its 20-day moving average. SPY has respected this average recently and a close beneath it would imply weakness.
Source: StockCharts.com
The Diamonds Trust, Series 1 (NYSE:DIA) ETF, which tracks the Dow Jones Industrial Average, is showing a very similar pattern to SPY. It has managed to clear its prior highs, although not by much. DIA is sitting at new highs while its MACD indicator remains at its lowest level in several weeks. This is an example of a negative divergence, and simply points out that a trend move may be losing momentum. While this is not a reversal signal, it does warn a trader that the move is getting long in the tooth.
Source: StockCharts.com
The chart for the Powershares QQQ ETF (Nasdaq:QQQQ) is also showing a similar divergence, although it has managed to clear its prior high by a wider margin than SPY and DIA. The $50 level was the area to watch, and QQQQ was able to successfully hold this level on a weekly closing basis. Some tech leaders such as Google (Nasdaq:GOOG) and Amazon.com are beginning to lag, so traders should closely watch Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL) as the highest profile tech leader still acting strongly. If AAPL begins to falter, it would surely have an impact on QQQQ and the rest of the sector.
Source: StockCharts.com
The Russell 2000, as represented by the iShares Russell 2000 Index (NYSE:IWM) ETF, has continued to maintain its leadership role as IWM cleared its prior highs before other market index ETFs and closed well above them as well. IWM is once again much extended from its 20-day moving average and as such, traders should be cautious about entering new trades in this space right now. However, despite being overbought, IWM continues to show the strongest structure of the market index ETFs and even the negative divergence in its technical indicators is not as pronounced as the others.
Source: StockCharts.com
Bottom Line
As mentioned last week, the fallout following the Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE:GS) fraud charge was only a single distribution day until proven otherwise. The markets responded quite strongly by quickly negating the weakness and trading to new highs this week. The current rally is reminding me of the tail end of the financial crisis, when traders couldn’t believe how the market was dropping every day - only this time, the market's going up! Ultimately, the markets will need to correct, and this will likely happen when the majority of traders decide that buying the dip is foolproof. While traders should always be cautious and stick to their plans, this becomes even more important when the markets begin to trade at extremes. This is when fear of missing a move becomes most likely as traders see stocks rallying day in and day out. While it’s definitely possible that the markets can continue to rally unabated, the current environment is vulnerable to violent shakeouts, and traders should account for this in their trading plans. By sticking to high-quality setups, traders can continue to take advantage of the great market environment, while avoiding a disaster on a reversal.
By Joey Fundora
Joey Fundora is an independent trader located in South Florida. Joey focuses on using technical analysis techniques to uncover supply and demand imbalances in equities. To see more of his work, visit his site on
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