The Most ‘Liked’ Search & Social Posts Of 2011

The social media experts who write for this column week in and week out don’t just talk – they walk the walk in social media and search marketing. In 2011, we saw interest spike in our Let’s Get Social* column as social media became a significant ranking factor in organic search results, following Danny Sullivan’s […]

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The social media experts who write for this column week in and week out don’t just talk – they walk the walk in social media and search marketing. In 2011, we saw interest spike in our Let’s Get Social* column as social media became a significant ranking factor in organic search results, following Danny Sullivan’s December 2010 report, What Social Signals Do Google & Bing Really Count?.

Google Plus Button SocialAs social media grew in popularity during the year, along with Google’s +1 and Google+ launch, it’s evident how important social sharing became to developing audience reach and driving more traffic to content via search.

Our two most popular posts of the year in this category are further proof of that, with over 30K pageviews each (separated by only a matter of a couple hundred) – note the difference in the social sharing stats in a matter of just 10 months:

Facebook Like Button BigWhile you can see that social sharing plays a large role in how content is consumed, it isn’t the only path to generating highly read content. As you can see below, sharing varies dramatically by platform, and the high number of shares doesn’t always correlate to overall pageviews and user engagement, as you might read about further in some of the articles listed below.

In cased you missed any social media advice from the experts the first time around, here’s the rest of our 20 most popular posts on social media in 2011:

*NOTE: As of December 1, the Search Engine Land “Let’s Get Social” column was renamed to Search & Social. In 2012, column topics will be more focused on how search engines are weighting social media influences, share signals and user rating data to provide users with a more ‘personalized’ set of results, in addition to exploring the growing intersection of search and social networks. You’ll continue to read about how the two platforms are affecting search marketing strategies.

Over at Marketing Land, we’ve started a Social Media Marketing column, where two of our most popular columnists above, Kelsey Jones and Ciaran Norris, will continue writing about broader social media marketing topics and how to integrate social media strategies into your overall marketing mix.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Elisabeth Osmeloski
Contributor
Elisabeth Osmeloski was Director of Audience Development for Search Engine Land and MarTech. She was responsible for increasing readership through owned, earned and paid media channels. In addition, she assists in programming sessions at Third Door Media's Search Marketing Expo conference series and manages speaking engagements for editorial staff. Follow her on Twitter @elisabethos.

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