Top 4 Mozcon Takeaways for Social Media Managers

Posted by Danny Wood

This week, I had the pleasure of attending my first MozCon, a conference held 9-years running now by MOZ (formerly SEOMoz.) Although MozCon has traditionally been a place where SEOs trade their favourite link building and technical optimization tips, the scope of the conference has expanded over the past two conferences to include many facets of digital marketing, out of necessity due to Google Search Algorithm Updates.

The conference had a lot of important learnings, not only for Inbound Marketers, but for Social Media Managers and Social Marketers in general:

Stop ignoring Google+. No, really, stop.

As social media marketers, we’ve all heard the grumbling or voiced our own displeasure; “G+ is no good, my audience isn’t there,” etc. However, MOZ Community presenter Mark Traphagen expertly disproved all misgivings about Google’s social network.

Traphagen presented a case study in which, through increasing G+ followers by 326%, he was able to increase that client’s website traffic from organic search by 188%. Of course this kind of increase is easier said than done, but there were some specific tips from Mark on how to achieve these results:

  • Ensure that your Google+ page is optimized, and your profile is completely filled out;
  • Specifically recruit new followers from your target audience through email marketing, other social media channels and community forums;
  • Host Google Hangouts, and where possible, feature recognizable figures from your industry.

Tweetstorms probably aren’t a great idea

In the final presentation of the conference, Moz founder Rand Fishkin presented a series of experiments related to SEO, social media and inbound marketing in general that he had been conducting recently.

Rand Fishkin

One experiment that is especially relevant to Social Marketers was related to “Tweetstorms”, or the practice of sending out a series of tweets in quick sequence containing photos or other content. Rand was able to draw a strong correlation between Tweetstorms and sharp decreases in Twitter followers. Keep your tweets to one-at-a-time!

With Google’s algorithm updates over the past few years, the process of optimizing websites to rank better in Google organic search has certainly evolved to become more complex, but several presentations at MozCon emphasized how important building a healthy network of links back to your website still is. (“Healthy” refers to natural, authentic links, and not links that are purchased or acquired underhandedly. Unhealthy links do more harm than good!)

As such, I wanted to include my own tip for how you, as a Social Media Manager, can do your company’s SEO-responsible a huge favour! (And also do a bit of shameless self promotion for Strutta.) Using Strutta, it’s easy to run a contest or sweepstakes that lives directly on your company’s website, in the form of an iframe promotion. Doing so will almost certainly increase the number of social media shares of that page that receives, and can also be a great opportunity for your SEO-responsible to build links back to that particular page of your site. Give it a try, just don’t forget to add a 301 redirect for that page after the promotion ends!

Your “SEO person” needs you more than ever :)

Perhaps the most important piece of advice delivered at MozCon was that an SEO or inbound marketer’s job is no longer just about building links back to their website and attempting to affect that website’s ranking in Google search results. It’s about driving real metrics, such as leads and revenue.

As such, make sure that you are working closely with your company’s SEO-responsible(s). Strategize on marketing campaigns and tactics together, and execute together as well. Use their knowledge of what people are searching for on Google to influence the content that you share, and increase the chance that it will be popular with your audience. Be the voice of your customer and bring them back helpful insights about social media conversations. Besides, we’re all in this together!

Blog Image Credit, MOZ
Content Image Credit, Kenichi Suzuki