Chipotle Creates Facebook Halloween Buzz

All you had to do to get a free burrito was show up at a participating Washington area Chipotle Restaurant wearing an article of tin foil. This was the simple message posted on Chipotle's Facebook page.

At the time of this post more than 54,000 people claimed to be participating. My wife, who is a high school teacher in Montgomery County, Maryland, said all of her students were talking about it and were making plans to buy Reynold's Wrap. They scrapped their original costume plans and wrapped themselves in foil. As I was heading out to take my daughter trick or treating, a half dozen of my neighbor's teenage sons were all decked out in Reynold's Wrap, on their way to Chipotle to claim their free burrito. It seemed that anyone over the age of 14 knew about it. And more than 40 pictures were posted on the Chipotle Facebook page.

Ok, let's not measure ROI on this promotion, but it created quite a buzz. Reynold's Wrap might have been the biggest winner.

Does Social Media Deserve 1st Page Rankings?

I feel like I'm one of the last SEO guys to jump on the social media bandwagon. I jumped on because search engines started paying more attention to blogs, photos and videos. And in order for my clients to dominate SERPS, we've got to do more SMO for them.

But if Google, Yahoo! and MSN are really interested in providing the most relevant information for Searchers, should social media posts be ranked above quality web pages?

How an Irrelevant Video Can Get a #1 Ranking

At a recent SMO workshop I attended, students were instructed to created a simple video from from a Power Point presentation, basically creating a short infomercial for their companies. One of my colleagues went after phrase "Internet Marketing for Community Banks". Primarily because he is an internet marketer with a background in community banking. So, it's natural for him focus on that niche. Within 1 day of posting and optimizing, the test video he created ranked #1 on Google organic search results, something that is almost impossible with a static web page!

I thought about how unfair it would be to be outranked by a video that only took about 15 minutes to create and optimize, and had little or no relevant content. Again, the video wasn't even about "internet marketing for community banks". It was just a test video/infomercial. It was only optimized for the phrase "internet marketing for community banks". What if I had spent months doing research and writing great content about "internet marketing for community banks", optimizing it, building links to the page and getting that number 1 ranking. Is that fair?

Initially, I didn't think it was fair at all, but when I looked at the SERPS for the optimized phrase, they all sucked! Not a single other site listed on the first page was optimized for "internet marketing for community banks". Is that because no one specializes in internet marketing for community banks? Probably not. It's more likely that no one has taken the time to carve out the niche like my colleague did.

Is Google Even Smarter than we Think?

So, I'd have to say in this case, the video did deserve the #1 ranking even though the video wasn't about internet marketing for community banks. Perhaps Google didn't even care about the content of the video because they knew enough about my colleague from his social media profiles clearly showing his background as a commercial banker and an internet marketer?

Washington, DC Internet Marketing Consulting

WSI is a leading provider of internet marketing consulting in the Washington, DC metro area. We specialize in implementing advanced social media and internet marketing strategies for the purpose dominating search engine page results and gaining an online advantage over your competitors.

I decided to start this blog after attending a 2-day workshop on social media optimization. The purpose of this blog is to share information, ideas and opinions about SMO and SEO with my colleagues, clients or anyone who interested in the topic and my opinions.

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