Got a business? Got a website? Then you need to sort yourself out with some social media accounts and, if you haven’t done so already, you and the SEO expert you’ve employed really are both missing a trick. The internet is all about socialising these days, getting together and having one giant party and if you’re not on Facebook and Twitter (at the very least), you’re the sad sack at the back of the class who failed to get an invitation.
There are many reasons why being active on social media is a great idea for anyone (yes, we mean literally anyone) running a business. The most obvious is that it puts you in direct contact with your customers easily and cheaply at all times, thanks to the wonder that is your smartphone. You can build relationships with people, earn their trust and ultimately make the process of brand-customer interaction much less faceless and a lot more personal… vital if you want to build up a loyal following. And, as any marketer will tell you, the more you know about your customer the better so you can tailor your products to suit their requirements. All of which means more money for you!
Self-promotion!
There’s really no more efficient way of promoting yourself than via social media and it can also do absolute wonders for your SEO campaign (pretty important if you want to beat out all your other competitors and make it to the very top of Google). Link-building is an important part of SEO as links are how search engines can judge the popularity of a website through the number of pages elsewhere linking back to it, and social media is only just starting to be used by many an SEO expert to help their clients climb the rankings.
If you run a blog, for example, you can send your links out via Twitter, Facebook and Google+ (among others) and watch as reader engagement climbs (which is why you should make sure your content is top-notch and of interest to your target market).
Currently, Facebook, LinkedIn Google+, Pinterest and Twitter links are nofollows (which means that search engines won’t index a site based on certain links), but just because you can’t achieve a followed profile link from a social network doesn’t mean you should ignore them. The benefits of social media linking are many and varied!
So how can you get the best out of your social media networks and improve your SEO at the same time?
Here are our top five tips for complete success
1. Choose wisely
There are a lot of social media sites out there and it can be tempting to try them all out. Don’t – you’ll only spread yourself too thin and never be able to maintain them all well enough. Look at your target market to see where they are and what they’re using, then pick your core three to really focus your efforts on.
2. Be patient
If you’re after instant gratification, you’re going to be disappointed – social media is all about time and effort, but the rewards are certainly ripe for the picking. It may be that some of your content you put out on Twitter is only linked back to from someone else’s site six months later – but that’s really invaluable from Google’s perspective and will bump you up the rankings, so don’t lose heart.
3. Build relationships
To get your content noticed and to drive brand awareness, you need to spark relationships with the major influencers in your field. Do all you can to catch their attention and then work your contacts well. Just remember that good things come to those who wait, so don’t lose your patience. Use social analytics tools like BuzzSumo or Topsy to help you identify who the big names are in your industry.
4. Be valuable
Basically, nobody’s going to bother sharing your content if it’s not interesting, newsworthy or of value to them or someone they know, so really get to know your demographic as well as you can so that you can really tailor what you’re putting out there on the internet.
5. Go digital
Written content is brilliant for websites and SEO purposes, as long as it has value, is done well and relevant to your end user, but this is the internet after all and you have so many weapons in your arsenal it’d be silly not to try and use them. Think videos, infographics, slideshows, GIFs, memes – all of these are incredibly shareable so get your thinking caps on right now.