Why Social Media Marketing Represents the New Face of PR

Google’s approach towards updating its algorithms has become increasingly aggressive in recent times, as the brand have introduced a higher volume of radical changes that target spam-laden websites and farmed content. This has hit webmasters hard, while it has also courted controversy thanks to its stringent and unflinching nature.

There is method behind such madness, however, as Google remain committed to improving the online experience and driving higher levels of customer engagement. As a result of this, content marketing has now emerged as the single most effective method for promoting products, sharing information and driving brand recognition.

Blurring the Lines: Why Social Media represents the new Face of PR

Content marketing is a diverse and fluid entity, however, and one which continues to blur the previously distinguished lines between disciplines such as PR and social media. With Google taking an increasingly dim view of paid content or earned media such as PR, for example, social media is becoming a more viable medium for sharing material, engaging the interest of customers’ and driving traffic to a commercial website. With this in mind, let’s consider the benefits of owned media such as social media and the advantages that it offers content marketers: -

1. Compliance with Google’s Current and Future Algorithms

While complying with Google’s current algorithms is important, it means little unless you can pre-empt future changes and tailor your strategy accordingly. Although this is not easy to do with any authority, it is clear that Google will continue to crack-down on paid content and article syndication, meaning that rehashing the same content across traditional PR distribution networks is unlikely to benefit your online brand. With this in mind, social media offers a clear advantage as it is entirely free to access and enables you to actively share and promote your content in a natural and organic manner. You can also reach a far larger audience through an integrated social media platform, while it also lets’ you tailor your message and generate real-time interaction with customers.

Related Resources from B2C

» Free Webcast: Four Ways To Improve Your Content Marketing Maturity

2. Networking with Industry Contacts and Potential Customers with Real-time

Whenever you publish a piece of content on a PR or earned media site, you usually have the opportunity to share contact details including telephone number, email address, website URL and social media home pages. While it is possible to share comprehensive contact information, however, earned media sites do not have the capacity to host social conversations or build real-time business relationships. Social media does have this capacity; however, as industry contracts, clients and consumers can instantaneously share your content, add you to their network or send you’re a direct message. This is a huge boon for business owners, sole traders and creative entrepreneurs, who can build a productive network of followers and communicate with them in a convenient and real-time manner.

3. Create and Maintain a Consistent Online Brand

The worlds of business and commerce are extremely fast paced, and brands are often pressed for time when competing in a busy marketplace. This can impact on the quality of their messaging, however, and create inconsistencies that undermine an entire campaign. The use of an integrated social media network makes it far easier to review your previous output, however, while also providing a real-time forum for customers’ to share their feedback on the quality of the brand and their perception of its positioning. This is in stark contrast to earned media sites and high-profile article directories, which would require you to locate and read every single piece of content in order to create a consistent message. These resources also fail to provide any form of direct link with your customers, meaning that it is almost impossible to measure the impact of your campaign and the exact perception of the brand.

Content Source - Social Media Marketing Represents 

Learning How to Score a Job Using Social Media, for Beginners

With 92% of companies using social media in their hiring efforts, job seekers can’t afford to overlook social as a vital resource in the job search. While you're busy job searching, employers are leveraging online resources to find candidates just like you.

That's why Mashable is collaborating with The Muse to bring you a free, email-based class series called How to Get a Job Using Social Media. The series features five different lessons with actionable tips on how to boost your job search strategy. Once you subscribe, content for the class will be delivered to your inbox each day.

These beginner-level classes will teach you how to establish your social brand, network with people online, identify career opportunities through social media, and turn leads into job offers. The classes include homework assignments to give you a head start in the process. Links to advanced readings will direct you to additional resources.

Content Source - Social Media 

5 Selfie contests that truly flashed on Social Media?

‘Selfie‘ was dubbed as the word of the year by oxford dictionary in 2013. Well it just doesn’t end there, your social networks are swarmed by selfies of friends, relatives and admit it; even you have taken a selfie and posted it on your social channels. Brands are not too far behind they have tapped in this craze and incorporated it in their campaigning efforts. Love them or hate them, selfies are here for now!

Marketers have started to cash in on this trend. To highlight the importance of this pop culture trend, below is the list of selfie contests which will hopefully inspire you with some selfie marketing ideas for your next campaign. Like we did the best twitter campaigns article sometime back. But first, let me take a selfie

1. AXE

Axe just launched AXE peace, a new range of their products. Thus, they kept the launch of their new product as the core idea when they ran their selfie contest on social media #KissForPeace – Twitter, Instagram & Facebook. The contest began on February 2014 and ended in June 2014, wherein they had 4 sub-contests (themes) i.e. – Kiss your loved one, kiss your rival, Pucker up and Kiss your AXE.

To qualify in these contests, for example in ‘Kiss your AXE’ step 1 – Kiss your favourite AXE product, step 2 – take a selfie when your kissing your product, step 3 – upload it on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram with the #KissForPeace and stand a chance to win a trip to Berlin. The central idea of this contest was to draw awareness about the new product, and the themes arose from the variant name itself – in a world filled with war, the greatest weapon is love. Make love, not war with new AXE Peace.

2. Turkish Airline

Selfies are great way to get your customers involved, but roping in celebrities is a great way to increase participation and awareness of the contest. Turkish Airlines took its #SelfieShootout contest one step further by hiring Kobe Bryant and Lionel Messi to market the campaign via a YouTube video.

The #SelfieShootout contest lasted for 3 months. 2 winners were announced on the basis of most likes they received on social platforms and they were rewarded a Turkish Airlines roundtrip flight ticket. The YouTube video received more than 130 million views within two weeks of its release. It just shows incorporating selfie + celebrities = Viral campaign!

3. Kenneth Cole

Kenneth Cole launched their selfie contest on January 31st 2014 and it ended on 31st March 2014. To participate the contestants had to follow their Instagram account, take a selfie with the message strip and post it with the hashtag #DressForYourSelfie. Winners stood a chance to win free shoes a year!

With this contest, the brand is trying to showcase the perfect example of leveraging user-generated content through the means of those message strips, it increases visibility of the brand, and helps gain more followers & credibility. Great way to get the word out, by inducing selfies and mind-numbingly amazing perk!

4. T-Mobile

T-Mobile has launched its back-to-school selfie contest #GradeUp wherein the contest consist of 5 entry periods and each entry period is divided into 2 parts – voting day & selfie day. To qualify participants have to follow T-mobile on their Instagram account, then they need to vote daily for their favourites and lastly have to post their selfie on the designated day on Instagram mentioned with the hashtags #GradeUp and #Sweeps. At end of contest 5 winners will be announced for each entry period and they will be rewarded with a prize package.

This contest is a great way to get an understanding of which product the users prefer as they are made of vote daily between two products, thus giving a better understanding of their consumer’s choices!

5. Ponds

Ponds tapped into the selfie craze as well and ran the selfie contest on Twitter wherein followers had to upload selfies with the hashtag #PondsSelfieReady. They promoted this contest on their Facebook page as well to increase awareness and participation. The contest begun on 18th April – 12th June 2014, the contest had 2 phases.

Simply click your selfie and upload it on the microsite to stand a chance to be showcased on a billboard across 6 cities. 3 winners were announced on 12th June and the ones who were shortlisted, were presented with a Ponds hamper. Ponds ran a very well executed contest, it being such a long duration created enormous buzz around it and in-turn increased participation.

Get inspired with these contest ideas and think how you can tap this to create next Selfie contest. All you need to do is carve your own niche, and use the medium to engage users with your brand and let them talk about your brand. To ease out your process of planning & implementing make use of various contest tools to boost your results.

Have you seen any other brand leveraging the power of selfie in their social media campaigns? Plus a little insight into what did you like about the campaign? Share your thoughts below!

Content Source -  http://blog.digitalinsights.in/selfie-contests-on-social-media

Social Media 2014 Statistics

How fast Social Media is expanding in 2014? Do you know how many active users Facebook has? How fast Google+ is evolving? How many users have never tweeted after opening their account on Twitter? Do these numbers matter to you? Let me give you a quick example-

A friend of mine who has been struggling to hire a PHP developer was chatting with me and I suggested him to try Facebook ads to reach out good developers based on his desirable location and other preferences. He wasn’t ready to try this at all. I took the liberty and started some Facebook ads on my own, fixed a budget of $20 for a day for a pilot project. He was stunned to see the results, more than 23K people reached, 300+ visited the site and 43 forwarded their resume or called him. All this, just for $20.

If you’re managing social media for your businesses, it is important to keep track of statistics so it keeps your strategy in-line. Last year we received an overwhelming response with our social media statistics of 2013. This year again we have taken upon ourselves to answer all your questions about various social networks and their active/total users in 2014!

The infographic below covers all the latest Social Media facts, figures, numbers and statistics of 2014. Some of the mind-blowing facts are mentioned here:

• 75% of the engagement on a Facebook post happens in the first 5 hours.
• 53% of interaction between Google+ user and a brand is positive.
• 44% of users on Twitter have never sent a tweet!
• 84% of women and 50% of men stay active on Pinterest.
• More than 2 users sign-up for LinkedIn every second.
• 23% of teens consider Instagram as their favourite social network.
• Weekends are the most popular time to share Vines.
• Number of snaps sent per day on SnapChat is 400 Million. (Yeah! that’s true)
• 40% of YouTube traffic comes from mobile.
• B2B marketers using blogs generate 67% more leads. Check out more about lead generation through Social Media.

Content Source - Social Media 2014 Statistics

7 Sins of Social Media Marketing

This article is part of SWOT Team, a new series on Mashable that features insights from leaders in marketing, brand-building and public relations.

Remember when social media was a new, unchartered territory for brands? Consumers flocked to platforms like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn overnight and marketers knew that, in order to stay relevant, they had to follow suit. 

Fast forward to today: 97% of marketers use social media to connect with buyers. The problem is, most still haven't figured out how to leverage social to create a personalized, relevant and enjoyable experience for their audience.

Socially awkward brands aren't just pushed to the sidelines, they miss out on building valuable relationships, or in some cases, end up on a viral list of social media blunders. Whether your brand is too boring, too tone-deaf or too promotional, your social media approach can’t be an afterthought. Here are seven deadly sins of social media marketing to avoid at all costs to keep your audience engaged, interested and loyal.

1. Being all talk

Image: Flickr, smkybear

The key to social media content is to show, not tell. Audiences prefer engaging with visual content over text anyday; did you know that tweets with image links get an engagement rate 200% higher than those with just 140 characters? Flooding your feeds with line after line of text could cause you to miss out on a huge opportunity to connect with your buyers. Instead, we should be emulating brands like Oreo, whose Twitter feed is addicting thanks to charming illustrations, clever videos and mouth-watering images.

Lucky for us, it’s easier than ever to share visual content, thanks to free design tools like Canva and seamless embed options on social platforms. For marketers, a picture really is worth a thousand words — act accordingly.

2. Putting on a one-man show

Trying to apply your advertising approach to social is a big mistake. In fact, one of the reasons social media is effective is because so many people tune out traditional media and mass messaging. On social, it’s even easier to mute brands that talk, but don't listen — with a quick click, consumers can unfollow or remove your content from their feed for good. Instead of talking about yourself nonstop,

make your audience the center of attention by highlighting their interests

make your audience the center of attention by highlighting their interests, like Monster Energy on Facebook, or sharing their content on Instagram like Sharpie. Your social following isn’t a captive audience, so take a break from broadcasting and start sharing content they'll actually want to click on.

3. Forgetting to think before you tweet

Staying relevant today isn't easy — trending topics go from viral to ancient history daily. So how can marketers keep up? Cue newsjacking. Instead of trying to generate buzz from scratch, brands piggyback on the popularity of top headlines to amplify their own content. We see clever newsjacks during the Super Bowl and the Oscars, but occasionally, the not-so-savvy attempts end up being headlines themselves.

Last year, AT&T earned serious social backlash for a failed 9/11 tribute, and, Gap crossed the line when it took to Twitter to promote discounts during Hurricane Sandy. It’s true that marketing today is time-sensitive, but you'd rather be late to the game than be perceived as offensive.

4. Thinking all social platforms are created equal

                Image: mkhmarketing

Your social strategy shouldn’t be one size fits all.

Your social strategy shouldn’t be one size fits all. For example, B2B audiences spend most of their time on LinkedIn, while B2C buyers can be found on Facebook, according to Social Media Examiner. Find the channels that best align with your audience's interests, then experiment with the type, cadence and style of content you think will resonate most. Measure what works and what doesn’t and optimize accordingly. Instead of publishing the same content to every channel, the best social media teams create tailored approaches based on the medium and the message.

Need inspiration? Check out GE’s Vine, JetBlue’s Instagram, L.L Bean’s Pinterest or Cap’n Crunch on Twitter. Each has a pitch-perfect approach for the company and the channel.

5. Putting your customers on mute

It used to be that if a customer had a complaint about your product or service, they could tell their friends, family or a 1-800 number. Today, consumers can share negative reviews with their entire network — and the searchable social web — through a simple click. Not surprisingly, 72% of customers who complain about a brand on social expect a response within an hour. But in some cases, they are lucky to get noticed at all. This Facebook post from McDonald’s sparked tons of nasty comments slandering the company's food and service, but last I checked, the Golden Arches hadn’t chimed in to put out the fire. Whether you have a handful of followers or 31 million Facebook fans like McDonald’s, you can’t afford to ignore your audience, period.

6. Forgetting to be a human

Image: Flickr, Henry Schimke

In an age where buyers are constantly bombarded with deals, promos and ‘lowest price’ taglines, your brand’s personality is crucial to stand out from the pack. Corporate jargon and automated replies will send your audience running in the other direction, while brands that aren’t afraid to let loose will be welcomed with open arms. This Twitter conversation between Pizza Hut and one of its followers is a great example of a brand having fun with its personality.

Ultimately, building a community of brand advocates today isn't about what you're selling, it’s about what you're saying. Luckily, the casual nature of social media makes it easier than ever for us to talk to our audience like humans.

7. Assuming your social strategy works

In the Mad Men era, measuring the true impact of your marketing efforts was nearly impossible. Luckily, marketers today have more data than ever to truly understand how our efforts impact the company’s bottom line. Still, of the 88% of brands using social media platforms for marketing, only about 37% are taking the time to measure the ROI of their efforts. It’s easy to tally likes and retweets to get an idea of how engaged your audience is on social, but those numbers don’t tell the whole story. There are myriad metrics to consider to help put a dollar value on your Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn efforts. Having a data-driven handle on your marketing’s impact is something even Don Draper would be envious of.

Today, the customer is in control, and they expect marketers to know where, when and how to connect

Today, the customer is in control, and they expect marketers to know where, when and how to connect with them on social media. Every marketer has a different road map for getting there, but avoiding these seven social mistakes can help us all steer clear of serious potholes.

Content Source - http://mashable.com/2014/08/28/social-marketing-sins/ 

10 Laws of Social Media Marketing

For business owners just getting started, a guide to build brand buzz and boost your bottom line.     

Leveraging the power of content and social media marketing can help elevate your audience and customer base in a dramatic way. But getting started without any previous experience or insight could be challenging.

It's vital that you understand social media marketing fundamentals. From maximizing quality to increasing your online entry points, abiding by these 10 laws will help build a foundation that will serve your customers, your brand and -- perhaps most importantly -- your bottom line.

1. The Law of Listening

Success with social media and content marketing requires more listening and less talking. Read your target audience’s online content and join discussions to learn what’s important to them. Only then can you create content and spark conversations that add value rather than clutter to their lives.

2. The Law of Focus

It’s better to specialize than to be a jack-of-all-trades. A highly-focused social media and content marketing strategy intended to build a strong brand has a better chance for success than a broad strategy that attempts to be all things to all people.

3. The Law of Quality

Quality trumps quantity. It’s better to have 1,000 online connections who read, share and talk about your content with their own audiences than 10,000 connections who disappear after connecting with you the first time.

4. The Law of Patience

Social media and content marketing success doesn’t happen overnight. While it’s possible to catch lightning in a bottle, it’s far more likely that you’ll need to commit to the long haul to achieve results.

5. The Law of Compounding

If you publish amazing, quality content and work to build your online audience of quality followers, they’ll share it with their own audiences on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, their own blogs and more.

This sharing and discussing of your content opens new entry points for search engines like Google to find it in keyword searches. Those entry points could grow to hundreds or thousands of more potential ways for people to find you online.

6. The Law of Influence

Spend time finding the online influencers in your market who have quality audiences and are likely to be interested in your products, services and business. Connect with those people and work to build relationships with them.

If you get on their radar as an authoritative, interesting source of useful information, they might share your content with their own followers, which could put you and your business in front of a huge new audience.

7. The Law of Value

If you spend all your time on the social Web directly promoting your products and services, people will stop listening. You must add value to the conversation. Focus less on conversions and more on creating amazing content and developing relationships with online influencers. In time, those people will become a powerful catalyst for word-of-mouth marketing for your business.

8. The Law of Acknowledgment

You wouldn’t ignore someone who reaches out to you in person so don’t ignore them online. Building relationships is one of the most important parts of social media marketing success, so always acknowledge every person who reaches out to you.

9. The Law of Accessibility

Don’t publish your content and then disappear. Be available to your audience. That means you need to consistently publish content and participate in conversations. Followers online can be fickle and they won’t hesitate to replace you if you disappear for weeks or months.

10. The Law of Reciprocity

You can’t expect others to share your content and talk about you if you don’t do the same for them. So, a portion of the time you spend on social media should be focused on sharing and talking about content published by others.  

Content Source - Social Media Marketing 

Twitter vs. Facebook as a news source: Ferguson shows the downsides of an algorithmic filter

While Twitter has been alive with breaking news about the events in Ferguson, Mo. after the shooting of an unarmed black man — video clips posted by participants, live-tweeting the arrest of journalists, and so on — many users say Facebook has been largely silent on the topic, with more info about ice-bucket challenges by various celebrities. Is this a sign of a fundamental difference between the two platforms? In a sense, yes. But it’s also a testament to the power of the algorithms that Facebook uses to filter what we see in our newsfeeds, and that has some potentially serious social implications.

Part of the reason why Twitter is more news-focused than Facebook has to do with the underlying mechanics of both sites, and the way user behavior has evolved as a result. Because of its brevity, and the ease with which updates can be shared, Twitter is a much more rapid-fire experience than Facebook, and that makes it well suited for quick blasts of information during a breaking-news event like Ferguson.

Flaws in the symmetrical follow model

Facebook has tried to emulate some of those aspects of Twitter, with the real-time activity feed that sits off to the right of the main newsfeed and shows you when someone has liked a post, or what they are listening to on Spotify, etc.. But even with that, it’s more difficult to follow a quickly-evolving news story easily. And while Twitter has added embedded images and other Facebook-style features over the past year or so, Facebook is still filled with a lot more content that makes it difficult to process a lot of information quickly.

Then there’s the nature of the community: although Facebook has tried to embrace Twitter-style following, which allows users to see updates from others even if they aren’t friends, in most cases people still use the platform the way it was originally designed — in other words, with a symmetrical follow model that requires two people to agree that they are friends before they can see each others’ updates. On Twitter, users decide to follow whomever they wish, and in most cases don’t have to ask for permission (unless someone has protected their account).

As tech-blogger Robert Scoble argued during a debate with Anthony De Rosa of Circa, there are ways to fine-tune your Facebook feed so that it becomes more of a news platform. Like Twitter, Facebook allows users to create topic-driven lists, but the site doesn’t spend much time promoting them, and they are difficult to manage (to be fair, Twitter doesn’t make its lists very prominent or easy to use either). Facebook has also tried to become more of a news source via the Newswire it launched along with Storyful earlier this year, and product manager Mike Hudack says the site is working on other ways of surfacing news better.

Better for friendships than news

In the end, Facebook’s model may be better suited for creating a network of actual friends and close relationships, and for keeping the conversation civil, but it isn’t nearly as conducive to following a breaking-news story like Ferguson, unless you have taken the time to construct lists of sources you follow for just such an occasion. And then there’s the other aspect of the Facebook environment that makes it more problematic as a news source: namely, the fact that Facebook’s newsfeed is filtered by the site’s powerful ranking algorithms.

As University of North Carolina sociologist Zeynep Tufekci pointed out in a recent piece on Medium, the Facebook algorithm makes it less likely we will see news like Ferguson, for a number of reasons. One is that the newsfeed is filtered based on our past activity — the things we have clicked “like” on, the things we have chosen to comment on or share, and so on. That keeps the newsfeed more relevant (or so Facebook would no doubt argue) but it makes it substantially less likely that a sudden or surprising event like Ferguson will make its way past the filters:

“I wonder: what if Ferguson had started to bubble, but there was no Twitter to catch on nationally? Would it ever make it through the algorithmic filtering on Facebook? Maybe, but with no transparency to the decisions, I cannot be sure. Would Ferguson be buried in algorithmic censorship?”

A technical issue but also a social one

As the term “algorithmic censorship” implies, Tufekci sees this kind of filtering as a societal issue as well as a technical one, since it helps determine which topics we see as important and which we ignore — and David Holmes at Pando Daily has pointed out that if Twitter implements a similar kind of algorithm-driven filtering, which it is rumored to be considering as a way of improving user engagement, Twitter may also lose some of its strength as a news source.

In a sense, Facebook has become like a digital version of a newspaper, an information gatekeeper that dispenses the news it believes users or readers need to know, rather than allowing those readers to decide for themselves. Instead of a team of little-known editors who decide which uprisings to pay attention to and which to ignore, Facebook uses an algorithm whose inner-workings are a mystery. Theoretically, the newsfeed ranking is determined according to the desires of its users, but there’s no real way to confirm that this is true.

In the end, we all have to choose the news sources that we trust and the ones that work for us in whatever way we decide is important. And if we choose Facebook, that means we will likely miss certain things as a result of the filtering algorithm — things we may not even realize we are missing — unless the network changes the way it handles breaking news events like Ferguson.

Source - Twitter vs. Facebook as a news source

20 SEO Tips, Trends and Predictions for 2014

Google made big changes to its search engine algorithm in 2013. What will those updates mean for search engine optimization in 2014? SEO experts offer their advice for the new year.

On average, Google makes about 500 adjustments to its search engine algorithm every year. Since the first Panda update in February 2011, though, many of Google's algorithm updates and other changes have been more ambitious and far-reaching in their impact. The net effect, in part, has been to elevate quality content over "thin" content, punish dubious link building practices and spammy sites and push digital marketers away from relying on keyword usage and performance data.

The changes are designed to improve the quality of search results Google delivers its users. For those who practice search engine optimization (SEO). However, the updates' collective impact has been at times confounding, frustrating and game-changing.

"I've been under the hood in this SEO game for over a decade, and I can't recall the last time the SEO community was this panicked," says Casey Halloran, co-founder and CEO of Namu Travel Group in Costa Rica. We dropped from the first page of search results to page 2 for our top keyword phrase, and we've been working to regain that position for about five months now."

Digital marketers in 2013 scrambled to keep up with all the Google changes, which included Hummingbird, a major overhaul of the Google search engine.

"Every time we react and recover from one Google update, there's another," Mike Huber, vice president of client services for content marketing agency Vertical Measures, said in a recent webinar. "It's like a game of Whac-a-Mole."

Given Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird and other big Google updates, are we moving into a post-SEO era? How will SEO in 2014 be different from SEO in 2013? What do digital marketers, businesses of all types and search engine optimizers need to do in the coming year to adapt?

[ More: How to Deal With Panda, Penguin and Other Google Algorithm Changes]

CIO.com asked these questions to the SEO community and received more than 60 responses. The following is a sampling of opinions and tips from a variety of experts.

Are We Moving to a Post-SEO Era All About Content Marketing and Results Tracking?

1. SEO will always be with us. Says Brian Provost, vice president of digital strategy for Define Media Group: "SEO is like tax law. It's a set of compliance issues and strategies to optimize businesses around them. To that end, SEO will always exist as a practice discipline to market content." Smart businesses, he adds, have stopped playing "chase the algorithm," opting instead for metrics-based content creation "in line with market demand."

2. SEO has always been about content marketing. Brian Wood, senior marketing manager of SEO for Wayfair.com, says he thinks the content marketing trend is overblown. "This is what quality SEO has always been about. It only seems like a growing thing to people who were, perhaps, using spammy tactics that Google has since made more difficult.

[ Tips: 16 Ways to Improve Your Content Marketing Strategy ]

[ Feature: The Content Marketing Hall of Fame: 13 Ways to Build Your Business ]

The same SEO tool that white-hat SEO pros used last year will be used next year, Wood says. "That said, it's true that the quality bar is getting higher as more and more sites focus on producing quality content. It's also getting harder to earn links with good content as bloggers are inundated with great stuff."

3. SEO and content marketing are becoming synonymous. "If you play by the rules, you can't have one without the other, SEO consultant Christian Sculthorp says. But traditional SEO will always have a place, he adds. "People underestimate the work that goes into keyword research, tagging each page [and] website structure. There's much more to SEO than simply spamming links."

4. SEO basics will never go away. Adam Barker, senior inbound marketing manager for SmartBear Software, admits that SEO has changed: "Content is the new way to optimize and drive traffic." But you still have to prepare your site through keyword research and basic on-page SEO, he adds. "This is laying the tracks for the train to come through — and making sure you have the right train coming, through keyword research, is still just as important as it was before."

How Will SEO in 2014 Be Different From SEO in 2013?

5. Search engines will get smarter. "Search engines are rapidly developing the intelligence to discern between websites that provide value from sites that create the illusion of value," says James McDonald, ecommerce analyst for Lyons Consulting Group. "If you [only] think of SEO as a series of HTML, link building, and keyword tactics that enable a site to rank better in a search engine, then yes, we are well on our way to a post-SEO era." Why? The next generation of SEO specialists will eschew those techniques, McDonald says, "and will instead dominate search rankings by consistently creating relevant, engaging and detailed content."

[ Related: 8 Things You Need to Know About SEO ]

6. Social presence will be more important than search. This trend, evident in 2013, will only be more apparent this year, says Ian Aronovich, president and co-founder of GovernmentAuctions.org. "It's not that search rankings and the SEO era are over," he says. "It's still worthwhile to put resources into SEO. But having a strong social presence is becoming more and more reliable in driving traffic and building brand awareness."

That's because people can quickly share content across social media networks, especially Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn, Aronovich says. "If you put out content that people are willing to share, you can get way more eyes on your company and brand in much less time [when] compared to waiting for search engines to update their listings."

7. Determining what ranks, and why, will be more complicated. Copley Broer, CEO of LandlordStation, expects a lot of time and effort devoted to sorting out what type of sharing and content move the needle for Google rankings now and which don't.

Flipboard, the mobile content aggregation app, is a good example, Broer says. Being indexed into Flipboard's bot so your content pops on Flipboard is important — but it's nearly impossible to tell when readers view your content on Flipboard unless they click through to open it in a browser. "How do you know if Google thinks that content is important if you can't tell how many people are seeing it?" Broer asks. "Does Google's Hummingbird search engine overhaul take Flipboard directly into account, or are you only impacted if someone shares your content from Flipboard to Google+?"

Popular On CIO.com

8. In 2014, SEO will be all about mobile. David Finkelstein, director of worldwide marketing for KEMP Technologies, notes that more than 40 percent of emails are now viewed on a mobile device. "Email remains the killer digital marketing app that can … create the viral marketing effect like no other app," he says. "SEO and associated content optimized for the mobile platform that connects to other apps via open APIs will continue to be the biggest trend, and challenge, to marketers."

[ Tips: Mobile SEO Is More Than Just Choosing Keywords]

Wood, of Wayfair.com, says mobile search is the big shakeup, as it's growing faster that desktop search (which is also growing). "At some point, we can expect Google to start heavily weighting a proper mobile site … and to weight speed, speed, speed. Ultimately, nonresponsive desktop sites or mobile sites that are only a portion of the site content are a bad user experience, and Google doesn't want to deliver that." Wood doesn't know if the mobile ranking overhaul will come in 2014 — "but when it does, sites without a quality, comprehensive mobile solution are going to be scrambling."

9. Local will continue to be big. Austin Melton, onsite SEO supervisor for SEOSalesPro.com, expects to see Google and Bing continue their trend of localizing search results. "[This] will spell the death of the 'national' search in many verticals," he adds.

10. Natural language queries will be more important. Daniel Laloggia, digital marketing manager for Walker Sands Communications, says the biggest trend for SEO will be trying to take advantage of Hummingbird, which is less a change to Google's algorithm and change to the engine that drives Google.

Google wants people to be able to "talk" with the search engine the same way they would talk with anyone else, Laloggia says. Users, meanwhile, want Google to parse sentences and understand their intent. As a result, the focus on individual keywords should fade in lieu of a more keywordtheme approach to content creation. "In other words," he says, "1,000 keyword variations on a theme should be less important, while great content built around the hub of the keyword theme will become more important."

11. The role of SEO experts will evolve. "There will be a continued rebirth of SEO agencies as content marketing or inbound marketing shops. It's already started to happen," says Chad Pollitt, director of marketing for DigitalRelevance. In addition, the marriage of SEO and traditional public relations will represent another SEO trend, taking the name "digital PR." Finally, Pollitt says, expect marketing communications and PR departments to swallow up SEO departments.

What's Your Best SEO Advice For 2014?

12. Identify your customers' biggest pain points by asking sales and support team members for feedback. "That means those questions aren't being addressed on your site," says SmartBear Software's Barker. "Write your content plan around those pain points and questions."

13. Stay honest. "Focus on generating high-quality content, creating a website that really serves your users and avoiding old link-building tactics entirely," says Namu Travel Group's Halloran. "If you build a 'killer app' of some sort, you'll most likely attract quality links regardless."

14. Be an authority, don't talk about yourself, and be better than your competitors. "Don't just have another company blog using announcements that nobody wants to read. Add value. Educate your target audience," says Adam Connell, marketing manager for U.K. Linkology. "Tap into influencers within your market sector and use them to distribute your content."

[ Related: Does Google Authorship Matter for SEO? ]

Don't worry about being unique, Connell adds; just be better than your competitors. "That's what Social Media Examiner did, and now [it's] one of the biggest marketing/business blogs on the planet."

15. Earn attention and develop your network. Pollitt recommends creating problem-solving and/or entertaining content and getting it featured by the online media and industry influencers. "Brands that can truly earn media will be the biggest SEO winners," he says.

To do this, build a network of writers, bloggers, editors, journalists and industry influencers, Pollitt says, as "these are the folks you'll rely on to write about and share your content." In addition, pitch your firm's executives as possible columnists on popular industry websites. Their expertise is valuable, Pollitt says, and the search engines respect link citations from reputable sources such as those industry sites.

16. Consider link building as another form of business networking. Jason Whitt, the "geek of all trades" at Geek Powered Studios, notes that there's been wide speculation about links becoming obsolete. "While I can understand the reasoning behind this, I don't believe it to be true," he says. "It comes down to the types of links you aim to build for a website and the intent behind acquiring the link."

[ Related: Google Begins Penalizing Search "Over-optimization" ]

Links will become obsolete if your Link-building strategy is limited to paying for inclusions in directories and posting blog comments with spammy links, Whitt says.

"Real link building is hard work, and it is in no way quick. The easiest way to look at legitimate link building is to view each link as a business relationship. The more time and effort you put into that relationship, the more likely that relationship will help you grow into the position you want to be."

17. Focus on quality in all its forms. Yes, your content should be "compelling, descriptive and differentiated," says Joelle Kaufman, head of partnerships and marketing for BloomReach — but quality extends to the technical side of your site, too. Kaufman's tips:

• Identify and reduce or eliminate duplicate pages and content.
• Make sure your "in-linking" helps users and search engines find their way around your site.
• Identify sources of insight from within and beyond your site to guide the content you create, curate and retain.
• Ensure your content is accessible and optimized for mobile searchers, who Kaufman says are already reaching 50 percent of search traffic.

18. Build a single site for mobile and desktop users. As the digital divide evolves and segments Web searches, there's an increased need for adaptable websites that are cleanly viewed on smartphones, tablets and computers, says Jayme Pretzloff, online marketing director for Wixon Jewelers. Instead of developing a site for each device, consider responsive Web design, which adapts to a device's browser size. In addition to improving the user experience, Pretzloff says this boosts SEO thanks to increased visits, reduced bounce rates, better search engine result rankings, more return visits and more social shares.

[ More: Google Turns 15, Celebrates by Smartening Up Search ]

19. Look for the best long-tail keywords. Kelly Boyer Sagert, content services manager for The Search Guru, says long-tail keywords are expected to become more important Hummingbird era of Google. Long-tail keywords typically contain more words, and are therefore usually less competitive. They are also more laser-targeted. (Examples include bedroom closet organization tips and kitchen pantry organization tips.) When you find one that perfectly fits your intended audience, it's a terrific find, Sagert says.

20. Schema markup will grow in importance. "Since the beginning of the Web, the most important Web coding language has been HTML. As the Web has evolved, so has HTML," Sagert says. The latest version, HTML 5, incorporates sets of HTML tags that help search engines understand structured data. (These tags are cataloged and referenced from Schema.org.) "Structured data helps the search engines quickly and easily understand the different elements of a page, such as articles, events and local address information," she says.

Source - SEO Tips, Trends and Predictions