Sneak Peek into the 2012 State of SEO and Internet Marketing
SEOmoz 2012 Annual Industry Survey Provides Data on How Internet Marketing Experts Use Social Media
The SEOmoz 2012 Annual Industry Survey is designed to highlight the state of SEO (search engine optimization), Internet marketing, and the marketing profession in 2012. SEOMoz shared this exclusive data with HubSPot in order to reveal key insights about social media usage before the official webinar.
So if you’re wondering how savvy Internet marketers are integrated social media into their Internet marketing in support of growing their businesses, HubSpot and SEOmoz pulled together an infographic snapshot to feature some of results from the 6,491 survey respondents. Below the infographic is some some additional thoughts from eBiz ROI.
The infographic embed code was provided on the HubSpot blog post (New Data Reveals How Marketers Use Social Media) to enable sharing of awesome content in exchange for link juice. These guys are generous and pros!
Key Takaways from SEOmoz 2012 Annual Industry Survey
Here’s a snapshot of some key points regarding the use of social media from 6,491 survey respondents.
- 44% of survey respondents self-professed either “advanced” or “expert” social media ability,
- Facebook and Twitter lead as the most popular solcial networks with 87.7% and 82.7% (respectively) of respondents indicating they are important
- Google+ was the third most popular social platform 54.9% indicating Google+ was important
- YouTube, LinkedIn and Blogs came in at 48.9%, 46.9% and 46.5% (respectively)
- Pinterest (20.6%), Stumbleupon (9.1%), tumblr (4.9%) and flickr (4.7%) rounded out the list
The infographic provides a great visual to see the relative popularities between these top 10 most popular social channels as indicated by the survey respondents. Some people may be surprised to find that Google+ is driving Google Local, Global Search and Google Maps.
In fact, it is the opinion of eBiz ROI that Google+ is less about social and more foundational to Internet marketing. The only question in our minds is when will Google+ take the #2, then #1 spot? Maybe in a future State of SEO and Internet Marketing in 2013 or 2014. Blasphemy some Facebook pundits will say! Impossible they’ll say!! Just remember that facebook was just a twinkle in Zuck’s eye when My(Who?) dominated:-) Getting a Google+ business page is simple and all businesses large and small should take the time to build and maintain one is search is an important digital channel for them.
Other Key 2012 State of SEO and Internet Marketing Takeaways
The survey results also made it clear that savvy Internet marketers are heavily using social media in their integrated marketing plans.
In fact,
- 76.9% use their blog for content marketing
- 52.3% use online forums in support of customer service
- 74.9% use LinkedIn for branding
Even though LinkedIn is ranked fifth in terms of popularity by respondents, virtually 3 out of 4 respondents indicated using LinkedIn for branding. Many forget that LinkedIn was born before facebook and for B2B marketers, represents a great Internet marketing opportunity for company branding through LinkedIn business pages, status updates, sharing company blog content and other relevant industry news relevant to your target market as well as answering questions to position yourself/company/product/service to other businesses. LinkedIn also has paid advertising that enables business to be laser focused in terms of hitting their target market.
Social Media Analytics is the Top Need
All Marketing Executives know they need to be engaged on social channels or risk getting left behind by the competition. That said, being able to measure Social Media ROI is also pivotal for success as keep up with the Jones is not a reason to be investing in social media. That’s why when the survey results indicated that 60.2% of respondents say they want analytics in the social media tools they use, it’s not surprising.
Here are some other key areas of focus for the social media tools:
- 45.2% Alerts and brand monitoring (reputation management)
- 38.9% Tracking mentions (reputation management, share of voice)
- 38.5% Daily management (community management)
- 32.3% Finding followers (reach, engagement)
- 30.3% Competitive analysis (known your “enemy”)
- 29.6% Automating (posts, status updates, tweets, etc.)
- 28.1% Finding influencers (connect and increase reach)
- 24.2% Determining traffic (key performance indicator for many)
- 24.4% Trending and reporting (spot an opportunity, prioritize investments)
Note: Text in parentheticals in bulleted list above is eBiz ROI interpretation of each social media analytics tool focal area and were not directly sourced from the 2012 State of SEO and Internet Marketing survey.
What’s interesting is that survey results appear to indicate that respondents are more concerned with reputation management and social media monitoring (our words) than determing incremental traffic resulting from social media investments.
For large brands with huge investments in their brand/logo/corporate identity, this makes sense. How much do you think the GE Logo (a.k.a Meatball as it’s known to many of us GE Alum :-)? Driving traffic will always take a back seat to brand management for these large companies, given the deep value and investment in their corresponding brands.
If you are Interest in additional information, here are the slides presented by Rand and Dharmesh introducing the 2012 State of SEO and Internet marketing survey results:
The State of SEO and Internet Marketing in 2012 from HubSpot All-in-one Marketing Software.
For those that skipped the book waiting for the movie!
If you missed the live webinar on 0Aug-2012, then check out the State of SEO and Internet Marketing in 2012 slidecast recording. WARNING – sarcasm alert 🙂 – 19 mins 36 seconds in RE polling as a (not so) popular type of marketing content that works (webinar cited as proof point). Awesome data with entertaining delivery. Would you expect anything less from Rand and Dharmesh?
It would be great to hear your thoughts based on the results from 2012 State of SEO and Internet Marketing survey results and wether there were any suprises for you relative to your own SEO, Internet marketing goals and best practices. Let us know your thoughs in the comments. We would love to hear them.
Leave a Reply