Recently in a hangout with Shelly Kramer I was invited to listen in as she was interviewed by Gabriella Sannino, and Doc Sheldon from Level Headed Marketing, to discuss SEO and integrated marketing.  Shelly Kramer is the Founder and CEO of Kramer & co A 20+ year marketing veteran, she’s a brand strategist focused on delivering integrated marketing solutions and leveraging the web and inbound marketing to drive leads and sales.

An Expert at Content Strategy

She’s an expert at content strategy, execution and tying social media to business initiatives. Recognized by Forbes as one of the Top 50 Social Media Influencers, she’s half marketer, half geek, with a propensity for numbers, producing results and a dash of quick repartee.

During the conversation, Shelly was asked a series of questions, from content curation to branding strategies one leading to the answer “Google plus is way more fricken important than Facebook.”

As a social media strategist this really got my attention, because #1; I believe she was right, and #2; Who says this, outloud?

I have my own checkered past with Facebook, as the more they work on becoming a profitable social network with force advertising, the less friendly and effective they are for businesses. But, I don’t believe Shelly’s comment was specifically about that.

Google’s Hummingbird

Instead, it’s important to remember we were discussing content marketing and very recently Google launched the Hummingbird change that reboot the entire search engine’s handling of search results.

I believe Shelly was trying to emphasize how important it is for companies to not only embrace content marketing, but to consider all that using Google+ can do for you when you are using content to market your business.

In regards to Hummingbird, it seems that Google is targeting more in-depth articles, ie: longer content, in hopes to give search users the opportunity to fully understand the information surrounding their answer. Most questions aren’t simply answered with a quick line or two of information, and require a well thought-out response.

Shelly had many recommendations about content, from being creative with the content you generate, to using that content several times in your content strategy, to having a content strategy plan. She also discussed content curation, social media promotion, list building and email marketing. Referring to your email list as the most important group of followers you can build, because you own it.

Additionally, she shared that social media curation is a way to share what’s important to your followers with them. I’d like to back this up by saying that a mere two hours before Shelly’s call, I listened in on a call with Guy Kawasaki who suggests content curation as being the best way to get more followers, and he credits it with bringing in many of the 5 million followers he now has on Google+.

My best summation of the hangout came to this:

As you are building content, you should also be building your social media following (through content curation) and then when you have creative content to share, you may do so on social media (G+) as you’ve earned the right to promote yourself. The traffic you bring back to your website should encourage visitors to sign up for your updates through email.

Social media marketing, the same as SEO and any other form of online marketing, requires a strategy. Several activities brought together in one strategic plan can and will produce results that make a difference in your business.

Without further ado, please enjoy this video of the hangout:

You can find Shelly on LinkedIn, Google +  or Twitter to learn more about what she does, and get more tips on content marketing.