Harnessing The Power Of Social Media.
Read any blog, article, white paper or other content on the subject of SEO and no doubt there will be a mention of how social media has been a real game changer in recent years, in contributing to improved rankings of websites and as a result an increased drive in organic traffic. Spend some time on SEOMoz (look at their SEO pyramid which places social at the top) and you’ll see a whole host of articles on the power of social media, and in particular Facebook and Twitter has not only on SEO efforts, but also on branding and increasing your brand exposure. Of course many site owners, nowadays, have become well versed in the need to have an online social media presence with many companies going so far to employ social media strategists and contracting social media optimisation specialist companies to handle the management of their accounts.
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But what if you’ve joined the Social Media craze late in the game, how do you “catch up” with your competitors?
Many webmasters whether they run a blog or website, or both, will often make the grave mistake of trying to do too much at once, without having thought about their social media strategy and researched their targeted market well. Others, will feel that just plonking a few social media widgets on their site, and posts/articles will do the trick in attracting interaction. Whilst, this may work for some very well qualified traffic sites with a strong online reputation already, but, for the vast majority of web masters just doing this will result in very unsatisfactory results.
So what’s the answer?
A few tips when engaging in any social media activity:
1. Competitor analysis.
Find out how your competitors are using social media, how often they tweet, do they post useful and informative articles or are they just posting a lot of irrelevant links? Knowing what the competition is currently doing, not only gives you some useful insight but also sets some goals to work towards.
2. Pimp your page.
Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or another social network platform you’re planning to use. Make sure that your Fan Page, Twitter profile, or LinkedIn page is customised and fits in with your company profile. Doing this just makes you look more professional and stand out a bit from the crowd.
3.Focus on quality and not quantity.
The old adage is as valid as ever. This applies to both recruitment of fans/followers but also in posting links and content. Steer clear of schemes where you get thousands of followers in a short space of time, they will either get you banned, or even if they don’t it’s unnatural and most of those followers or fans won’t give a damn about what you’re saying anyway. In short it’s a futile exercise.
4. Get involved with your industry and help people.
I’m a strong believer in contribution, and adding something of value and benefit to your audience or industry. There’s many ways this can be done, perhaps get involved with a local charity project or organisation, offer to build a website for free for a community group, develop an app that helps your target market etc. There’s so many ways we can improve the web and useful content and experiences for people, and by doing something creative and a bit different, the link sharing and word of mouth effect will soon kick in.
5. Embed social buttons.
Often people get so obsessed with their websites, they often forget other more obvious and noticeable places to embed social buttons. Email signatures are good, and you’ll be surprised how effective just adding a few social buttons for Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Friend Feed can be. If you’re writing new press releases and syndicating them to different places, make sure you leave some space for social sharing buttons.
Social Media has become a tour de force in digital marketing, and if implemented and used correctly, it can not only improve your search engine rankings but also your brand and offer a great way for your to reach to your target audience and customer base and open up the channels for quicker communication. If used in the right way, social media can be very rewarding for your company and brand, and dare I say it very addictive – you’ll wonder what took you so long to harness the power of social media.
