While we regularly focus on topics that directly address search marketing, it's important to remember other online channels that influence SEO and improve your overall online strategy. Social media has become an independent channel unto itself, but there are a lot of correlations between search and social. In today’s SEM Tip, Verndale will show you how to leverage social media to help build upon search marketing strategies.
Social media is about building communities around your product and brand. Connecting with people through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube are great ways to get people to engage your brand and spread the word about your products, services and campaigns. Social media can supplement your search marketing strategy by increasing your web reach and getting people to talk about your brand not only on their social media profiles, but also on their personal blogs and websites. These people are likely to link to your website which helps your link-building and off-page optimization efforts.
Here are some tips for optimizing your social media strategy:
Place content within the most relevant medium: People like to slowly consume images, video, and other media on Facebook, quickly consume live updates and timely news in Twitter, and share funny, educational, or interesting videos through YouTube.
Don’t spam your users: Don’t post the same content to every social media channel. The goal is to get engagement on all channels and if users feel like you post everything to every channel, they will never want to follow your brand on other social media channels.
Link between your social assets systematically: Always link between your social media channels. By systematically linking between your assets, you create an online loop for your users to follow. If they see something funny on your YouTube channel and then see the link to your Facebook account, they may click-through to see what other interesting content you have there.
Prioritize calls-to-action in your messages: The occasional use of “Like”, “Follow”, and “Share” in updates has proven to drive conversions. Intelligently use this language and optimize the performance of your content.
Timing is everything: Post once a day around 10-11AM to take advantage of the busiest social time. Also, prioritize Monday and Tuesday posts as people are the most active from Monday to Thursday.
Leverage these social media strategies to diversify your online marketing program and enhance link-building efforts. Contact your Search Marketing team to learn more about how you can integrate social media into your online marketing mix.