With SEO being such a subjective area of marketing, I jumped at the chance to hear the thoughts and theories of industry insiders and attend the ionSearch conference in Leeds on Friday. The day was full of intriguing insights and bold statements, however I chose to condense the talk by Head of Social Media at Blueclaw Media, Sean Walsh, into a quick post demonstrating where social media in sports is currently at and where it is heading (…although these ideas could be applied to other industries).
- Push the offline online…
i.e. a connected stadium with wi-fi screens, opinions, etc. streamed from Twitter at half time
- …and online offline
i.e. tweet, post pictures or deals in store
- Sponsorship
i.e. Hearts app to order pie at half time (social plus technology), also useful as avoid queues
- Datatainment
provide fans with the stats to back up their area of interest, i.e. football infographic
- Actual content marketing
i.e. Fox Sports ‘ref cam’ or music concert streamed live
- Content has a life time
update, evolve and repurpose it
- Second screen experience increasing
i.e. tweeting about a programme whilst watching it on TV
- Content topical and relevant
i.e. if the weather is sunny (an occasion in itself) then get an infographic on how to do a great BBQ
- Social media is ‘revolutionising’
it’s everywhere all the time, it’s viral nature drives emotional excitement (with the right content), it helps brands react to their
audience ultimately producing better content, there are no international boundaries, it creates a shared experience
- Offline increasingly important
i.e. hash tag placement, make use of data available, e.g. best sellers, used to get links and therefore has SEO value
- Socialslurp.co.uk
social media watchdog, posts great (and terrible) case studies, updated every Friday
Let’s be proactive to this increasingly integrated area of marketing and bear these points in mind when generating ideas for our clients. This is only a snippet of the day, there were many more talks on areas including Searchmetrics (Marcus Tober), 86 Billion Free SEO Tools, Why the Brain is Best of All (Mike Essex), and Real Life SEO (David Harling) which I also have notes on should they be desired.