This post is included as part of a series related to social media training efforts underway at Cisco. I sat down with Mark Traphagen and Phil Buckley of Virante to ask a few specific questions around social media and how social media interacts with search engine marketing and optimization. This is the first of two parts for this interview.
What impact does Social Media have on Search Engines?
The first search engines were little more than human-fed directories. As the web took off, trying to human index it became unworkable, for obvious reasons. By far the most obvious and dramatic effect is seen in the growing personalization of search results. Since at least 2007, Google results have been influenced more and more by the searcher’s location, past search history, and how she interacts with web sites, among other factors. With Google’s introduction of Search Plus Your World in early 2011, social network influence came front and center.
Now by default if a searcher is logged in to Google while searching, her results are heavily influenced by Google contacts, including Gmail contacts and people circled on Google+. Bing has begun a similar effort incorporating a user’s Facebook friends. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, revolutionized web search with their invention of the PageRank algorithm, which counts links between sites as “votes” and weighs those votes by relative authority. When the social web emerged, Google and other search engines realized that social interactions online could provide a new source of signals, a way to diversify the signal set and augment or confirm the signals being sent by links. Since then, they have been slowly increasing the amount of effect that social signals have on search results.
I joined the Cisco Global Social Media Team in February of this year (2012). It has been one wild ride on this team with LaSandra Brill as my manager. The learning curve has been steep and the team dynamics great. When I joined the team, my responsibilities included managing the community strategy (Cisco Communities), the Facebook corporate strategy, the Twitter corporate strategy, the Cisco mobile events app, and social integration on Cisco.com (which includes social login). I also helped lead the social execution of our #WorkTogether campaign in September. My responsibilities changed slightly during a recent reorganization; now I focus on our blog and community strategy, social CRM, governance and policy, and social integrations on cisco.com.
Two principles have guided my team:
Research – Understand what Cisco enthusiasts, customers, partners, and prospects want to see on our social channels through objective research.
Delivering Value – Deliver quick wins while at the same time working on the larger initiatives.
More and more companies are starting to integrate innovative social strategies to enhance their efforts of connecting with the outside world. As is the case with all large-scale corporate changes, advancing a company’s social business and ensuring long-term success calls for upper management support.
We sat down with Michael Brito (@britopian) from Edelman, Sheila Jordan (@CiscoSheila) from Cisco, and Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang) from Altimeter Group to find out what they thought about getting Executives involved with employees’ social pursuits. Hear what they had to say in this short 2-minute video:
How can I learn more about getting Executive support for social media? Read More »
In case you have missed our tweet with the replay link to our Social Media Week at Cisco (#SMWCisco) which took place on February 14th, you can access the recorded sessions here. We just couldn’t get enough of these wonderful speakers so we dared a few of them to tell us a truth about social media. Watch this 2-minute video to find out what Michael Brito (@britopian) from Edelman, Todd Wilms (@SocialB2P) from SAP and Jeanette Gibson (@jegibson) from Cisco had to say:
Edited by Christy Park (@christyjpark)
HUNGRY FOR MORE TIPS AND BEST PRACTICES? Read More »
When you complain about a company’s customer service using Twitter, do you expect them to respond? If you’re a baby boomer (which covers approximately 76 million Americans), you are more likely to. In fact, according to a new study from Maritz Research, nearly half of all respondents expect companies to respond to—or at least read—their tweet.
The Maritz Research study examines consumer expectations from brands in the social web. In addition to being timely and relevant, this research highlights the value of customer engagement which is especially vital for me and my team as we continue to lead Social Media Marketing listening at Cisco.
When it comes to listening, Maritz Research uncovered a significant gap: although nearly half of the consumers who tweeted a complaint directed at a particular brand expected the company to respond, only a third of those customers actually received a tweet back from the mentioned brand.
What impact does Social Media have on Search Engines?
