EPISODE 68 – FACEBOOK AS A SEARCH ENGINE, ICELAND’S VIDEO MARKETING SUCCESS, AND QUICK SEO TIPS FOR 2018

This week, our hosts Rai, Min, and Kyle welcome newcomer Mitch to the group! We’ll be exploring topics from Kyle’s 2018 prediction (It’s already coming true! We have a real fortune teller in the house.) To how content marketing turned the perception of Iceland from barren wasteland to tourist hot spot. Don’t forget to tune in every Friday for the latest in tech, marketing and design from the Digital Natives!

Facebook as a Search Engine [5:00]
Iceland’s Video Marketing Success [9:00]
Quick SEO tips for 2018 [18:00]

Facebook as a Search Engine

Kyle shows off his supreme fortune telling skills by bringing back a topic that we discussed in Episode 64 about our digital predictions for 2018. Facebook continues to add features that keep users in Facebook for longer. Will Facebook step up their search game through 2018 and become the next Google? Only time will tell!

“My prediction for 2018 is almost coming to fruition here with Facebook killing publisher’s ability to reach you organically.” -Kyle
“I was on Facebook the other day and I don’t think I ever saw this before, but I started typing in ‘Keystone Click’ and ‘Keystone Click Milwaukee’ automatically populated in there.” -Kyle
“Businesses can still get into the organic feed by creating a good dialogue with your followers and hoping that they share your content.” -Kyle
“Hopefully Facebook becoming more of a search engine will ease some fears from this split timeline if this becomes another way that businesses can be found organically.” -Rai

Iceland’s Video Marketing Success

“The land of content marketing” isn’t necessarily the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Iceland, but it may as well be! Rai explains how Iceland went from a struggling hidden gem to one of the most popular travel destinations ever partly due to the success of the “Inspired by Iceland” campaign. Here’s the “hardest karaoke song in the world” we discussed in the episode. Were you able to sing along?

“Iceland needed rebranding since day one. I think we’ve all heard that legend about how Iceland and Greenland were named. Iceland got the unappealing name even though it was the nicer and greener of the two countries.” -Rai
“Prior to the 1990’s Iceland was considered a really inaccessible country to visit. Number one, their language is crazy hard to learn, Number two, there was a lack of well-known tourist sites. Number three, people generally skipped over it on their travels and opt instead to go to mainland Europe because of its proximity.” -Rai
“Iceland had this image of a barren wasteland that no one wanted to visit. How did they get out of this mess? Enter video marketing.” -Rai
“The ‘Inspired by Iceland campaign’ worked to make the country more accessible to travellers. They started simple with a message in English from the President of Iceland saying what inspired him, and then they moved on to more quirky and fun videos showcasing the real people of Iceland.” -Rai
“This campaign created more than brand presence, it created a brand aesthetic. It caused people to want to almost become a part of the culture and bring home a piece of Iceland for themselves.” -Rai

Quick SEO Tips for 2018

“SEO is no longer what you do, but it’s what happens when you get everything else right.” Min takes us through some basic SEO tips that are important in the changing search landscape – Including what we can do to accommodate for voice search and mobile-first indexing.   

“At Keystone Click, we’ve already moved into that mobile-first mindset. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, it needs to be in 2018.” -Min
“You will be punished with a steep traffic decline on your site if you do not have that secure certificate, so it always has to be HTTPS.”  -Min
“With the emergence of voice search and digital assistants, you need to start optimizing for long-tail keywords now since that’s the way people are searching now.” -Min
“Google is rewarding users for small tweaks and changes to your website. If they can see that you’re making that effort, you’re going to be rewarded.” -Min

You can find this episode of The Digital Natives Cast at:

The Digital Natives Cast on iTunes

The Digital Natives Cast on Google Play

The Digital Natives Cast’s Website