There are an increasing number of tangible benefits to using Social Media in your daily marketing, for example the number of likes, fans , followers that you have across the various platforms.
There are also benefits that are harder to measure, for example customer service, brand recognition and the building of long-term relationships. Even if you still don’t fully understand or ‘get’ Social Media, it’s now more important than ever to include it in your marketing budget. When you’re watching TV this evening, take a look at the number of companies directing their customers and potential customers to Facebook pages rather than their actual websites and you’ll see what I mean.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is something that is very much tangible, but again difficult to understand and even more difficult to implement when you’re not sure exactly what you’re meant to be doing. If you can’t be found on Google, Bing or Yahoo, you are more or less invisible online. SEO isn’t just about ranking well; it’s about building your online brand. There are many factors that affect how a site ranks in the search engines and SEO is about optimizing your site as best as possible to help it succeed.
It’s important to note at this point that SEO and social media marketing shouldn’t exist separately – far from it. There should be an element of SEO in all of your online activities. As social media marketing matures, it is becoming clearer and clearer that it has an impact on a site’s SEO.
Here are a couple of ideas to get you started:
Here are a few ways you can use your social media marketing activities to aid your SEO:
Incorporate Keywords into Tweets and Posts
Although Twitter limits you to just 140 characters, it’s an incredible way to share a link to your blog, article or video. Incorporating keywords into the Tweet (perhaps as a hash tag, for example #socialmedia) helps that Tweet get pulled into a results page by the search engines. Over on Facebook, there is more room to make your posts visually more attractive, and also to target keywords in your updates, particularly in the title. You can also write a short description about the content of each post, again incorporating your target keywords.
Drive Traffic to Your Main Site
When posting blog posts on your Facebook or LinkedIn page, don’t include the full content. Include a short snippet or introduction and use that to drive visitors to your official website. If somebody can read the whole post on your Facebook page, it’s great that they are there in the first place, but it would be even better to get them over to your website where they can see what else you have to offer.
Think of your social media profiles as gateways to your website.
There are lots of other ways that you can incorporate SEO into your social media marketing. Please contact me for more information!
