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Social media… you know… for kids. WRONG. It’s actually incredible how many prospects we speak to that think it’s either a fad or pointless.
What’s really valuable about Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other sites are their rich, potential S.E.O. value. I know… S.E.O. is kind of a mystical term for folks that aren’t totally immersed in the world of website marketing, but I will tell you this… tweeting, posting, liking and sharing can be your shortcut to inbound traffic (even if you don’t know anything about Search Engine Optimization).
Look at it this way: everything that goes on your website affects your S.E.O. rankings, so keep in mind that the same goes for your social media interactions. The beauty part about social media is that it can associate certain keywords with your website and assist Google and Bing (among others) in providing searchers with your site as an answer to their inquiries.
Here are four ways social media interaction affects your ranking:
- Who is InteractingSome of your inbound traffic from social media will depend on with whom you are interacting. For instance, if craig1045 from Kinosha, Wisconsin (with a whopping 26 followers) suddenly retweets your brilliant entry, chances are it’s not going to do anything for your results. If someone like Lady Gaga suddently takes an interest in your witty and timely humor and shares it with her 9,000,000+ followers on Twitter, you may see a spike in who is now finding you.
- Using Keywords in Your PostsFor those of you who are new to S.E.O., your website pages’ keywords and descriptions have a lot of say in who finds you and how on the internet. If you are sharing promotions and content which contain those same keywords and descriptions that tell search engines what your site is all about, you’ve got a better shot at coming up before one of your competitors.
- Volume of Content & BloggingSome people don’t consider blogging as a form of social media. I beg to differ. What a better way to interact and share pertinent information than to load up a blog entry with valuable, engaging information optimized with keywords? The more intriguing content, the better the chance of getting found and creating valuable interaction.
- Give to GetJust like you were taught when you were four years old, sharing is important. The way in which you build a community and buzz about your products and services will certainly lend itself to search results. If your material has people talking, commenting, sharing and liking, search engines will notice hot topics and associate them with results linking back to your content.
Interaction with your contributions on social media is essentially what is going to get you found on search engines. If you identify the social media outlets which make sense for your business to use, formulate a social media plan (Who will manage it? How often? What’s the goal? What are you going to share?) and create interaction with that content, your growth can be exponential.
*Apologies to craig1045 if you are real.
I think of how Conan only followed one lady and she had people giving her stuff as her twitter following went from 20 to a few thousand overnight. Social media for business is a great thing to do, I usually keep a ratio of 6 business to 4 personal type posts and that way I am not slamming just business down people’s throats.