How to Boost Your Business with Flash Social Mobs, SEO and HashTag Optimization

A friend of mine who owns a popular travel site is looking to take her business to the next level by partnering with large scale social media influencers and well known destination points - a flash social mob approach. Brilliant!

To get the most bang from her social flash mob, she asked how she could sprinkle in some SEO and HashTag efforts:

1. First come up with a list of key search terms she thinks people will use to find the deliverables the hotel or popular destination point has to offer. A good way is to search what's hot is to scope out the Groupon and Living Social "destination offers" out there. Let the bigger fish do all the work ;-)

2. Once she has that information she simply needs to research the weight and competitive value of those terms on Google Ad Words 24 hrs before and during the time of her social flash mob (ie: Los Angles Vacation)

3. For her industry, I suggested she take a quick peek at Google Insights (beta) to see what time of year those words mattered most to hotel and vacation destinations. That will give her a better idea of the relevance based on the time of year people search those terms most often and allows the client (hotel or destination point) plan around their busiest times.

4. Then of course get bid figures for those words on Google AdWords. This is so she can figure out what to charge the hotel/destination point for this additional add-on.

5. For the campaign to maintain SEO and HashTag effectiveness, she needs to coach her influencers to incorporate the SEO terms and hashtag words into their posts, monitor the activity and offer some item of value. A downloadable code, a voucher...something to close the deal (a total conversion point).

On a final note, I suggested she maintain her finger on the heart beat by monitoring HashTag relevancy trends on Twitter. HootSuite is good tool. I'd also do a 48 hr. FB sponsored stories campaign matching both SEO terms and Twitter hashtags.