An estimated 79 percent of Americans have at least one social media account, making these platforms an immensely popular means of engaging with friends and family as well as businesses. The engagement people have on these platforms has paved the way for organizations to build a strong social media marketing strategy if they want to ensure they take advantage of all opportunities to find leads and customers.

Social media has evolved into an important part of e-commerce and digital marketing. Seventy one percent of customers are more likely to make a purchase based upon referrals and recommendations they receive on social media. Further, more than half of users on Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube report that they follow brands on social media to help them learn about products and services.

A quality social media marketing strategy opens the doors for you to engage with these consumers and turn them into customers. Here is how to build a social media marketing strategy that works for your brand.

What is a social media marketing strategy?

With such a large percentage of the consumer population on social media, a good social media marketing strategy empowers you to take your promotions to these popular platforms. It provides an excellent channel for incorporating many of the most valuable elements of modern marketing, including personalized marketing and direct engagement.

Through social media, customers feel as though they can get a better idea of the values of a particular business as well as answers to their questions or concerns. It helps to shed the impersonal view of the business as an entity, and instead helps potential customers see the people behind the scenes who work at the organization.

A good social media marketing strategy will understand how to incorporate these optimal, unique elements of social media into a broader marketing strategy that represents the brand well across multiple channels and platforms. If you have not created a quality social media marketing strategy for your organization, here is what we would recommend.

Examine your overall marketing strategy

Begin by examining your current marketing strategy. Remember that you want your marketing channels to integrate seamlessly, creating a consistent experience for customers regardless of where they interact with your organization. A good social media marketing strategy, therefore, will want to understand the precise goals and positioning for the rest of the marketing team so that they can easily align these new platforms.

Consider important factors such as:

• Who your target audience is
• The types of channels and platforms this age group appreciates
• The pain points of this target audience
• How these prospects and existing customers respond to different types of content and outreach
• The language and tone you typically take with your customers-- do you focus on being friendly and approachable? Do you take effort to present yourself more formally as an expert?

Look also at the KPIs you want to measure for social media. Before you get started, you need to understand what your goals are concerning social media marketing. Knowing what you want to accomplish will help you understand where to focus your efforts and what to measure. This will guide the rest of your social media marketing strategy.

A social media marketing strategy can help in a variety of ways. It can increase brand exposure, drive leads, help customer service, and build traffic for websites, to name a few. By determining precisely what role you want your social media marketing to play within your greater advertising strategy, you will find it easier to build a plan that will help this goal materialize.

1. Look at competitor strategies

Considering that an estimated 91 percent of businesses use social media marketing, the odds are that your competitors already live on various social channels. Therefore, take the time to dive into their profiles and campaigns a bit to gain a better idea of how they use social media for their organization. You can look at their followers and the engagement with the material they post. You can also use the Data Cube to gain even more insight into how this particular company builds their marketing strategy and the success they see. 

Take this information and start to develop some ideas regarding how you want to create your own strategy. Look at their statistics, such as posting rate, the amount of content they post from their own site versus non-affiliated sources, and how often they interact with their followers. Use these insights to start forming more ideas about a successful social media marketing strategy for your organization.

2. Research your target audience and their social media usage

Assuming you have created a thorough marketing strategy outside of your social media marketing strategy already, you should have a good understanding of your target customer. Knowing important demographics and information about this target customer can now also help you find them on social media.

Make sure you develop your information about where your target audience lives on social media through data, as the demographics on a number of different platforms continue to change.

3. Work with your content marketing team to plan what you want to post through social

Now that you understand where your target audience lives and what you want to accomplish with your main social media accounts, work with your digital and content marketing teams to draft potential posting schedules. Review the types of content that will likely generate the best results on the social media platform. See if you can collaborate to draft some content that will serve the social media audience particularly well.

Remember that your social media marketing strategy should revolve around a conversation with your perspective customers and existing customers. They do not want to log into their social media accounts and find themselves subjected to regular commercials or information coming from a so-called soapbox. Instead, they want to engage in conversations with prospective brands. They want to feel as though organizations care about their needs and answering their questions. Posting content that aligns with these goals, even if it doesn't come from you, can be OK, as it helps to build relationships with these customers.

You can use BrightEdge, along with social listening, to track emerging trends and popular topics. This can help you develop the best posts for engaging with your audience and posting content that resonates best with your customers. Staying on top of the conversations that matter the most to them will help your organization stay relevant in the mind of customers.

5. Incorporate customer service

Remember that an important part of social media is nurturing more direct relationships with your customers. Customer service plays an important role in this goal. Social listening tools can help you pay attention to mentions of your brand or industry across the social platforms. This can help you keep track of conversations and know when a response from your organization might be warranted. Let your customers know that you pay attention, and if they need something, you will be there to help.

6. Measure the results of your campaigns

Once you begin leveraging social media marketing, you now need to regularly measure the results from your campaigns. Look back to the KPIs you wrote down at the beginning of this process. These KPIs will help you track the most important results involved, and thus can help you determine your success rate.

Social media can provide a powerful means of driving traffic back to your website. BrightEdge makes it easy to track the traffic rates and rankings of your website pages, so keep careful track of the pages you post on social media. This will help you see how posting the pages on social media impacts the success of that page. You want to watch your engagement and traffic metrics on this content.

Also monitor your internal social media metrics, such as the number of followers you have and how often people engage with your individual posts. Do not overlook opportunities to engage with people in conversation, but monitor how they respond to your efforts. 

The better you can track the results from your campaigns, the easier it will be to see real progress and continue to evolve your marketing plan to help your business thrive.

7. Make adjustments

Armed with your data from the success and shortcomings of your social media marketing strategy, you should now continue to make regular adjustments to help you improve in the areas where you struggle. Continue to monitor your progress and fine tune your social marketing strategy to keep it well aligned with your business goals.

A good social media marketing strategy empowers you to better engage with prospective customers and join the global watercooler. Brands who understand how to do this effectively can take their branding to the next level. Take advantage of the BrightEdge capabilities in monitoring social media content engagement and tapping into the latest trends and see what these platforms can offer you.

According to BrightEdge Research an estimated 52 percent of clicks on non-branded queries will go to the top 3 sites listed on the SERP. The higher your site ranks, the more clicks you will naturally receive. When Google ranks websites, they use their algorithm to try and identify the sites that best answer the needs of users. This means that they take into account engagement metrics, including a good (lower) bounce rate. This ranking factor assumes that sites with a low bounce rate do a better job of engaging readers and encouraging them to further interact with the content. When users engage with the site, Google assumes that this indicates they answer the user’s intent and needs.

Obtaining a good bounce rate involves a firm understanding of what Google measures when they discuss this factor, how bounce rates can differ between sites, and how you can improve your bounce rate. Here is what we want the BrightEdge community to understand about a good bounce rate.

What is bounce rate?

Google uses the term ‘bounce rate’ to describe single-page sessions on your website. This means that if someone starts at Google, clicks on your site, engages with the content on your page, but then clicks back to the SERPs or closes the window, they will be counted as a bounce and their buyer's journey ends there. Activity that does not involve clicking through to another page on your website or otherwise engaging with your domain counts as a bounce. The type of content you create, your industry, and even where the visitor originates before they land on your page will all influence your bounce rate.

What is a good bounce rate?

A good bounce rate can be a challenge to determine and it can vary widely between sites, and even pages within the same site.

Take, for example, blog sites. Blogs tend to have high bounce rates because their purpose generally consists of answering a specific question that people ask. If someone wants to learn about optimizing their site for the holiday season, for example, they might click on a blog post that professes to answer that question. That does not mean they ever had any intention of engaging further with brands that produce the content, they just wanted an answer to their question. 

Similarly, pages that provide specific information, such as contact information pages, will generally see high bounce rates. People looking for this information often search Google for it, click on the page to find their answer, and then click off once they have satisfied their needs. These people want to contact the business, and now they have the means to do so. They have no reason to look elsewhere on the site.

Types of websites and their industry will also impact what can be classified as a good bounce rates. E-commerce sites, for example, will generally expect people to navigate through their website as they shop for particular products and compare their options. For this reason, these types of sites should aim for bounce rates that fall below 45 percent. Non-ecommerce types of websites should consider their bounce rates to be average to good if they fall below 60 percent.

Remember that certain pages on your site will have different bounce rates than other pages. Your blog and landing pages will have higher bounce rates than content that helps people travel the journey to understand your products and services.

Determining a good bounce rate for your particular site

Determining a good bounce rate for your site will involve taking into account all of the factors that will influence people’s levels of engagement, including the industry, type of page, and how people landed on your page. This metric will be highly individualized to your site.

Google Analytics offers helpful information about how other sites perform within these criteria. You can look at average bounce rates for other sites in your industry, for example, to gain a better idea of where your target goals should be for your site.

Track also where your site falls currently. Record your bounce rates for various types of pages including website pages, landing pages, and blog pages. This will give you a starting point that you can compare to as you begin to optimize your site further to obtain a good bounce rate. 

Use the data from Google Analytics as well as the information specific to your website to create goal bounce rates. See where you have the most room for improvement by finding the pages that perform worst within specific categories of pages (so you compare blog pages to other blog pages, for example) and working to understand what separates them from the pages that perform best. To be confident your site is properly optimized and ensure a healthy bounce rate, check out this BrightEdge site audit checklist.

How do I earn a good bounce rate?

The key to improving your bounce rate lies in better understanding what customers want to see so that they engage with your content and feel interested in exploring your website further. If your bounce rate does not fall where you want it too, here are six ideas you can implement to improve it.

1. Make sure the page is well linked to the rest of the site

You want people to have easy access to relevant links that will help them move throughout the site. Including links to other pages that might interest your readers based on the content they are currently consuming. Content that gives more information about particular topics or offers them greater depth concerning this particular subject will all work well. Be sure to avoid linking to broken pages such as orphan pages.

2. Have a highly relevant CTA

Your CTA should tie in closely with the content your reader consumes. Links to gated content that offers more information about the topic at hand, for example, would be a good place to get started.

To take this strategy a step further, see if you can analyze where your readers pay the most attention on your site. If you see, for example, that people pay more attention to the top of your page, you can place your call to action higher on the page.

3. Maximize the user experience

You want to make an optimal user experience those who land on your website. This means that your site should be:

• Easy to navigate
• Relevant to their needs
• Easy to read
• Personalized

The material your visitors see should reflect what you know about them. If the visitor has visited the site before, offering content suggestions based on past interests can help. Clear navigation and site maps can guide people around the site. Content that aligns well with the query that brought people to the page and thus fills their needs will also benefit your bounce rate. Finally, using features such as headlines, bullets and lists all make the content easier to digest and understand, which makes it more engaging for your visitors.

4. Improve your page loading speed

Fifty-three percent of your site visitors on mobile will leave a page that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Such little engagement will make it difficult to rank well in the SERPs. You want to try to minimize your load times as much as possible.

To reduce load time, consider factors such as:

• The type of files you include on your site
• Whether you should compress files on your page
• Your JavaScript and whether it slows down rendering

5. Make sure your page has been optimized for different audiences

6. Use engaging images and videos to drive engagement

Images and videos naturally increase engagement, which is why Facebook posts with images receive 2.3 times as many shares as those that do not. Adding relevant, optimized images that encourage people to fully engage with your content can also entice people to learn more about your brand, and help you achieve a good bounce rate.

Just remember as you add these visuals to ensure that they do not hurt your load time. Carefully consider the type of file to ensure it will not hurt a good bounce rate.

Convincing people to remain on your page and further engage with your site make a tremendous difference in the performance of your content. It will make Google look upon your site more favorably and it encourages an increasing number of people to enter your buyer’s journey. Gather data on the bounce rates you want to see for your content and consider how these tips can help you achieve a good bounce rate for your domain.

Case studies from the BrightEdge community

BrightEdge makes it easy for brands across all sectors to grow with their SEO initiatives. SEO plays a critical role throughout the buyer’s journey, helping brands increase their visibility for potential customers and achieve SEO success. Quality SEO will help brands have a strong presence on the SERPs, casting them as industry leaders and insightful experts. 

The top-of-the-funnel stage tends to receive the most attention from companies considering how to improve their SEO effort, but the strategy also offers considerable power for the rest of the customer journey as well. Customers use search throughout their buying process. 

During the early stages, they tend to seek out educational content as they read a variety of articles and consume different types of content, trying to determine how they want to solve their pain points.

As they move forward with their top company possibilities, however, they still perform searches. These prospective customers want to compare the brands to others and look at the results other customers have seen during the middle stages of the funnel. As they prepare to buy, they will look for deals and promotions that help them get the best possible value and ensure that they receive the most value for their purchase.

The power that the Brightedge platform offers works for organizations of all sizes, therefore, can have a tremendous impact on SEO success, the funnel of clients, and their ability to bring in new customers. 

We have selected three BrightEdge customers from different sectors who have successfully employed the platform and thus seen tremendous SEO success..

Kiddie Academy

Kiddie Academy offers educational childcare. They wanted to focus on local SEO, to reach new customers, and broader SEO that would help them connect with potential franchise owners.

AIS/Thrive

Based out of Atlanta, Thrive wanted to increase their visibility to new buyers. Their paired with AIS Media to create an SEO campaign that would help them meet aggressive business goals.

Philips Hue

Philips Hue is a smart lighting brand that works to provide customers with the best lighting experience possible. They wanted to launch a blog as a pilot in the UK and then expand.

Strategies to nurture their SEO throughout the sales funnel

As these companies set about improving their SEO strategies, they had several commonalities, despite their diverse industries.

1. Each of them looked at gaps in their sites. To ramp up an SEO initiative, brands have to understand where the gaps in their current content creation process lie. This allows them to start to identify where they need to create content and how they can ensure that the content they produce encourages people to move down the sales funnel.
2. They used BrightEdge to find keywords that aligned with the customer experience they wanted to create. Keywords do not only matter at the top of the funnel. Knowing the terms people search for in the middle and bottom stages of the customer journey make it easier to create content that can bring people through all the stages of the journey towards conversion.
3. They understood the importance of using SEO throughout the entire funnel. They did not only look at the top of the funnel, but instead used their early stage content as a part of a larger strategy that helped them convert that traffic into customers.

As these three organizations set out to improve their SEO campaigns, they worked with the BrightEdge platform and team to experience some incredible results. Here are a few of the strategies and platform features that these brands use to drive their SEO success.

BrightEdge features to build an SEO success strategy

Recommendations

The recommendation feature of the platform allows site owners to easily see what parts of their pages need improvements. Rather than going through page by page, they can prioritize which changes will give them the best results. This allows them to see the most progress while optimizing their time investment.

AIS used the recommendation engine, along with preferred landing pages, to create content that was segmented to the needs of the audience. The recommendations helped them better optimize their pages to attract users at each stage of the buyer’s journey.

Data Cube

The Data Cube is the powerful BrightEdge feature that makes it easy to perform a variety of types of content research. For SEO purposes, it allows customers to identify keywords and easily understand their search value. With data such as the search volume, the level of competition for the keyword, and even if they keyword produces alternative types of results on the SERP-- such as videos, Quick Answers, or images-- customers can use this information to build a full strategy. 

Philips Hue used the Data Cube to find keywords that they could use to create clusters of non-branded keywords. This allowed them to start to expand their blog by creating helpful content that could begin to earn them rankings. They were also able to find keywords that offered great potential for building a strong blog by finding the terms that had high search volume but low competition. This got their blog off to a running start.

AIS also used Data Cube to nurture their SEO success. Thy uncovered keyword opportunities that aligned well with aggressive business goals Thrive had put forth. Specifically, the brand was able to find the critical keywords that played important roles in customer decision making. They were thus able to map content that nurtured growth and kept customers moving through the buying process. 

Customer Service Team

In addition to the incredible features on the Brightedge platform itself, the importance of the customer service team can also not be underestimated. The BrightEdge support team can use their knowledge of SEO as well as the platform to help customers achieve their maximum possible SEO success.

With the client Kiddie Academy, the BrightEdge team worked with their internal marketing professionals to find opportunities where they could win Quick Answer placements. The strategy worked successfully, which helped Kiddie Academy to dramatically increase their real estate on the SERP, and thus their brand recognition and the number of clicks they received to their site.

The BrightEdge team also worked with Kiddie Academy to identify gaps within the site. Working together to repair these gaps made it easier for the site to nurture customers and drive more business to the client.

Philips Hue also turned to the customer success team to maximize their results. The team worked with Philips Hue to identify important keyword clusters and potential terms that they could go after on their blog to increase their SEO success. This guidance helped them grow their blog quickly.

Results

All three groups saw dramatic increase in their SEO rankings by using these important features. Kiddie Academy saw a 249% increase in their high-ranking keywords in position 5 or better along with a 41 percent increase in organic conversions. Philips Hue was able to increase the readership by 10,000 additional visits per month and enabled them to roll their blog out to other important markets. AIS and Thrive achieved an 87.8 percent increase in page 1 rankings, increasing their market share. Their increase in organic leads led to major client deals.

Understanding the importance of SEO throughout the sales funnel can empower brands to get the most out of the BrightEdge platform and see strong results that will help them drive their brand. Come and explore our case studies for these three clients to learn more about their SEO success and how they reached the results they achieved.

Since 2014, local search has been adapting at an incredible pace. It fits with Google’s relevancy mantra—delivering the best search results to users based on their location. But that means businesses and marketers have to keep up with the changes—especially brick-and-mortar shops that rely on local traffic.

Outside of the formal algorithm rollouts, we’ve seen fluctuating local search and changes to Google My Business. The carousel was replaced with the local pack. The local pack was trimmed from 7 results to 3 items. Local directories were also evaluated heavily for their quality guidelines.

More recently, it’s become vital for a business without a storefront to define its service radius. It has also become more difficult for brick-and-mortar businesses to target cities too far outside their physical address.

Think about what you search for when you have a specific local intent. The verticals affected most by this ever-changing landscape are the ones you’d think of first—the restaurant, hotel, and travel industries.

Although Google has not launched a major algorithm update for local search results since the Pigeon update back in 2014, they have made several changes to the Google My Business Pages. These changes have made it easier for businesses to engage with customers through the SERP, encouraging them to visit the business page and hopefully visit the store in person or make an online purchase. 

Here is what every business interested in excelling in local search needs to know.

Google’s Local Search Goals

Google’s local ranking emphasis and ongoing local efforts contribute to the overall goal of Google—personalization and relevance. Someone searching for a local product or service, whether they’re at home on a desktop or walking down the street searching on mobile, should see the best possible results.

In order to deliver on this, Google aimed to define the parameters of local search as precisely as possible. Instead of general city targets, geolocation was further dissected into neighborhoods. This gave new emphasis to the importance of a correct NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) and a shift in how successful local marketing would be.

How Google Ranks Local Search Listings

In order to understand how local search rankings fluctuate, you have to monitor your brand and keyword targets at a local level, instead of just the US. BrightEdge can help you determine your geo-targeted market and create specific localized campaigns for your brand or service.

The local search ranking factors are important to monitor on a yearly basis. The existing ranking factors are present here, albeit with a local focus—on-page optimization for local terms, link signals with local relevance, social signals. There is also a heavy focus on specific local SEO factors—Google My Business signals, NAP consistency across citations, and the strength of your review portfolio. Now quality is favored over quantity, and the search radius continues to shrink with laser-like precision to the business’s storefront address and neighborhood.

In addition, signals like reviews and citations are also becoming more refined under the Google microscope. Accuracy and relevancy can enhance citation signals along with the quality of the directory or aggregator used. Just a large volume of reviews isn’t enough to rank either—the timing, consistency, and the quality of review sites are all factored into the local search ranking algorithm.

Content Marketing for Local SEO

In addition to your existing strategy that targets your brand, products or services with high-volume keywords, you’ll need almost an entirely different strategy that targets your local neighborhood, or to at least weave some local search elements into your existing content.

First you want to identify your radius and your local audience. What neighborhoods do you want to reach, and who makes up those neighborhoods? What are they searching for, and how can you help them?

This is where your content strategy can go outside the grid when it comes to your brand. If you’re a maternity clothing store in Astoria, you want to build content for new moms and maternity clothes. But you can also hone in on your local keyword targeting by writing about the best daycares in Astoria and your surrounding neighborhoods—relevant and hyperlocal.

In order to identify your audience and their needs, you can use the tools already at your disposal—Google Analytics demographic information and interest categories, Facebook Insights, AdWords Keyword Tool and more.

It’s important to monitor your content performance for your local search strategy. Identify the goals you want to achieve—do you want more traffic from your surrounding neighborhoods? Do you want to rank for local search queries? Do you want more sales from your immediate location? Once you’ve identified your goals, tailor your local content strategy to achieve them.

In addition to just creating content, make sure you are optimizing it. Craft local-focused meta titles and descriptions and optimize your images for local search.

Pay attention to your industry. If you’re in real estate or hospitality, you can corner the local content market with neighborhood guides, local landing pages, and “best of” lists.

The key for local content is to be useful to your market. That can mean promoting events, news, sports teams, or little-known spots and becoming the go-to resource for your neighborhood.

Best Practices for Local Search

If you’re looking to ramp up your current SEO strategy, or if you’re starting from scratch, there are best practices to consider for your local SEO.

1. Consistency

Both on and off site, your Name/Address/Phone Number listing needs to be consistent. It’s worth spending the time to update anywhere your business might be located on the web to match exactly how you’re listed on your website.

1. Citations

Speaking of your business listings, check to make sure you’re listed everywhere that’s relevant to your business and seen as a quality site. Sites like Yelp, Foursquare, and of course:

1. Optimize your Google Business Page

Update and optimize your Google My Business page with your NAP, categories, keyword-targeted description, photos, and more.

1. Optimize on-page for local

Your content and site architecture should reflect your local search strategy. Make sure your city and neighborhood targets are present in your copy and metadata. Take advantage of Schema markup to boost this content.

1. Manage your reputation

Your online reviews can make or break your local business—and Google knows this too. Review signals are quickly climbing the ranks as part of the ever-changing local algorithm.

1. Do not neglect mobile

Remember that Google has found an estimated 94 percent of smartphone users have looked for local information. Make sure that your page is fully mobile compatible and that your content has been optimized for users on-the-go.

A local content strategy and citation building strategy should be ongoing. Make sure to start with your site foundation to create an optimized local template for copy and metadata. Don’t Overlook These Crucial Parts of Local SEO

Taking advantage of Google Business Pages

Most businesses know that claiming their Google Business page comprises step one of a successful local search strategy. Over the past few years, however, Google has also introduced a number of new features for the pages. These features offer opportunities to engage even further with prospective customers and attract attention to their pages.

Google Q&A

Prospective customers can ask questions of businesses right from the SERP. These questions appear on your local search listing when your business pops up. Many businesses fail to pay attention to these questions, which results in long lists of questions that appear on the page with no answer. Sometimes even worse, the answers that do appear come from other users and might not be helpful for the business or might even be detrimental.

Neglecting to answer your questions can detract from your efforts to demonstrate that you care about your customers. Remember also that the questions people submit, chances are other prospective customers want to know, too. Prioritizing answering these questions will improve your appearance on local listings and give customers a better understanding of how you can meet their needs.

See What’s In Store

You have the option of allowing customers to see what is in your store, before they even step foot in your building or visit your ecommerce site. Those looking for a particular product will appreciate this opportunity to verify that you carry what they need before they go through the effort of going to your business. For customers deciding which store to use, your ability to provide with concrete evidence that you will meet their needs will encourage them to convert.

Google Business Posts

You can create temporary posts on your Google Business page that will allow you to notify customers about various important events, services, or listings right when it is most likely to have an impact. You can create posts directly from the Google My Business App. Posts do expire and the purpose is to highlight timely news or promotions. Google displays the posts to customers on your Google Business Page, so use them to give prospective customers one more reason to visit.

Reputation Management and Local SEO

Reviews are crucial to your local SEO strategy. Not only are they considered a ranking signal, but managing your reviews should be extremely important to you as a business owner. Why? Because it’s extremely important to your customers.

Earning favorable reviews on the top sites—Google My Business, Yelp—will help that first interaction that local searchers will see on their desktops or mobile phones and tablets. The process of getting reviews is tricky, and one that is monitored more and more by Google. Here are some key takeaways for reviews:

• Whenever possible, acquire naturally
• Speed and velocity of reviews are monitored—keep track of your requests and promotions to avoid an influx of reviews
• Responding to negative reviews is easier than trying to remove them

You can get creative with asking your customers to post reviews, but you should always let them know where you’re listed and how to leave a review—especially in the case of a favorable sale or interaction.

The response to negative reviews can’t completely combat the effect of that negative review on a potential customer, but a smart and thoughtful response can negate some of the backlash.

In addition to reviews, social media is a great way to maintain your reputation for local SEO. Using and optimizing sites like Twitter and YouTube can help boost your local content and dominate your local SERP presence.

Can’t get enough local? Check out our other local SEO blogs.

As part of the run up to BrightEdge's Share19 on October 18th and 19th in New York City, the company has selected and announced the 2019 Edgie Award finalists in 7 categories.

BrightEdge's awards program recognizes the excellent work done within the BrightEdge community by brands and agencies. To that end, we looked for customers' best stories and results of 2019 in the following categories:

Award categories

1. Innovator Award -- Looking for interesting AI, machine learning, automation, robotics, innovative and deep use of platform.
2. Performance and Results -- Driving business results through the SEO/content channel, please share % growth and hard $ numbers if you can.
3. Michael Kirchhoff Technical SEO Award -- An individual who shows outstanding character and SEO expertise and philanthropic work. Learn more about Michael Kirchhoff and why we named the award after him.
4. Digital Marketer -- An individual who exhibits expertise outside of the SEO channel.
5. Elevating Award -- Looking for cases where SEO was elevated horizontally and vertically in the org.
6. Community Ambassador -- A person who is active and contributes to the BrightEdge community, online, user groups, and Share.
7. Best International -- Technical implementation across many countries and the incremental results driven.

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The finalists in alphabetical order are:

1-800-FLOWERS
AMC
BOEING
BLUE MOON DIGITAL
DILIGENT
EATON CORPORATION
GOLDEN SOURCE
IBM
IPROSPECT
KIDDIE ACADEMY
KINTONE
MARRIOTT
MERKLE
NEW ERA CAP CO
NOBLE STUDIOS
PEPBOYS
PLANET DEPOS
REPRISE
STANFORD CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL
SUNWING
TERADATA
TOMBRAS
UC DAVIS
WORKDAY
WPROMOTE

We congratulate all the finalists and extend our best wishes to claim the award in their category and division.