Social Media
Social Media is now more than the new buzz word for businesses
In fact social media is fast becoming the bee hive for both marketing and customer service activities.
The principle role of social media for business is to engage with customers as well as to listen to what people are saying about their products or services.
Another role of social media, becoming increasingly important, is related to Search and Google ranking of web content. SEO, search engine optimisation, practices are becoming more influenced by improving the engagement factor of web content. Successful SEO is no longer dominated by keywords, key phrases and links.
Google algorithms, used to determine ranking, are becoming increasingly influenced by Social Signals, instances of user interaction with web content. The sharing of blog posts, the tweeting of url’s referring to web content, the viewings of video content on places such as YouTube are all Social Signals, indicators of user interaction. Google’s aim is to deliver quality search results to users, so they need a system that makes aims to deliver quality results. For a more detailed explanation, read this post on our blog, ‘Will your web content reward or penalise your ranking in Google’.
A blog should be at the heart of your social media strategy
Ideally a blog should be the hub between social interactions on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. and the formal speak of the company website. Drawing attention to blog posts via social media channels can attract readers.
The blog provides opportunity to share useful tips in more depth than you would on social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. The blog provides opportunity to demonstrate expertise, share a point of view, openly ask for feedback via comments and generally develop a persona that engages. If social sharing buttons are in place then the User can easily pass on your post to their contacts, also creating the all important social signal.
If you don’t have any social media accounts yet, I suggest you start with Twitter and LinkedIn. Twitter is a must for just about everybody, providing a neat way to keep updating your followers on information you feel will be useful to them. LinkedIn is a must also because so many people like to refer to it to see who they’re dealing with. Even if you just set up a profile with a photo, LinkedIn is likely to provide the top ranking reference for you in a Google search.
There’s a step by step tutorial for setting up a Twitter account you can follow. There’s also a tutorial for setting up a LinkedIn account in a similar format.
If you’re what I call “bemused and confused by social media” you may find some helpful information on this social media cheat sheet, an infographic.
Here’s a brief explanation of the main social media channels used for business.
LinkedIn is widely used for B2B businesses
Google+ provides facility to send information to groups according to which circle they’re in
Twitter is great for establishing ‘instant’ communication with your customers
WordPress started life as a blogging platform but now many business websites are built with it
Facebook is just as much for businesses as for the individual
Creating a business channel on YouTube can really reap rewards
If you don’t know much about blogs and want to have a look at a few examples then visit our blogs page and find out more.
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