Social Media Marketing

Social media has changed dramatically in the last few years.

Depending on who you speak to, search engine optimization (SEO) is either substantially influenced or not at all influenced by social media. I’m sure everyone has their own opinions, case studies, and sites that show greater or lesser correlations between their social media engagement levels and their natural search results. If working on SMM gives you facial ticks, part of our SEO Services can monitor your social medial as well as your entire Internet Marketing strategy.

Here is a list of important social media ranking factors

Steady, Frequent Blogging

Make it a habit, once a day or once a week, the search engines love to see a blog and remember each blog post counts as an added page to your website so even if you only blogged once a week your site would have 52 new pages every year! Check out our Business Blogging page where we share a great link building technique with Blog Commenting.

Number of Twitter Followers

You’ll need your own corporate Twitter feed, which brings its own problems around brand protection and also the potential for dealing with customer service inquiries, but the more followers you have, the more authoritative your Twitter persona and the more value will be associated with your URL.

Quality and Relevance of Twitter Followers

The best followers are the ones with their own communities of followers. The more high value people who follow you, and retweet your stuff, the better. It’s one thing getting followed and retweeted by Stephen Fry with over a million followers, but it’s also important to get the same response from accounts that are more specific to your industry. Someone with “fashion” in their description who retweets your “20 percent off the new spring collection” offer is equally valuable.

Number of Twitter retweets

Most likely as a ratio of tweets to retweets — the more your content is reproduced by others the more authoritative it is. Obviously the more followers you have, the more likely you are to be retweeted. However, it isn’t just about retweeting other people’s content or dishing out promotions. It’s about engaging in conversation with people in the industry.

Number of Facebook fans

You’ll need to create your own corporate profile on Facebook, which brings the same potential problems as a corporate Twitter feed, only multiplied numerous times due to the sheer level of engagement of people on Facebook. However, if you decide to engage with customers and potential customers on Facebook, the total number of likes your page receives will add value to your URL.

Number of Facebook likes

A large number of likes, but little engagement, is a sure sign of someone gaming the system. People will tend to like you if you talk to them. Successful Facebook pages include a lot of content written by other people.

Number of YouTube views

An obvious one, but any content you upload to YouTube should link to your site in the description, and the more times it is viewed, the more value will be attributed to your video.

YouTube User Comments

YouTube is also about engaging with other YouTubers and commenting on popular videos. The more you comment, the more link juice is passed back to your profile.

References From Independent Profiles like YouTube and Linkedin

Using YouTube can bring in some really good authority if done brilliantly — if your link from your video passes some value, imagine how much more value would be passed if you could get other people to parody your work and include links to you from their profiles.

Linkedin Is Built For Business

Linkedin is a great way to connect with real business people and I think Linkedin carries more weight than Facebook because Linkedin is specifically for business. I belong to several Linkedin Groups that give me more comments and interaction than Facebook.

Title of Your YouTube Video

Any references to your target keywords in the title of the video will help ensure that any authority passed will be relevant to a specific theme. Keywords should also be in the tags and or transcript where possible.

Positive and Negative Brand Mentions

Use a tool like Radian6, or a free tool, and ensure that you have significantly more positive brand mentions than negative. It won’t be 100 percent accurate but Google has already made investment in this area in 2011, so it’s well worth monitoring.

Number of Social Mentions In All Potential Media

Total visibility across all social media shows that your content is important to all people and not just a result of a large special offer for Facebook/Twitter users. HowSociable is a simple way of giving yourself a rating here.

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There are many, many social networks on the web. From mainstream to the ones targeted for specific interests, no matter what you niche, industry or interests. The following are the top social networks everyone should be using; Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Linkedin.

Beyond the four major social networks, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Linkedin, I think the best way to start using social media to promote your website is to sign up for submission to the 30 or 40 appropriate popular ones you can access by “Share This” buttons or better yet a submitter like Onlywire. As you go through creating profiles which will eat up about 4 hours, read the “about us” pages. You may decide that some of them just are not for you or your niche. For example, when I got to Kaboodle I skipped it because its targeted to women who shop a lot. There were a few others like Hi5 where it would be silly to be sending blog post about SEO. Use common sense here.

Here are some articles we have written about Social Media Marketing:

Boost Your SEO Using Social Media

Five Reasons Businesses Must Be Social To Survive

For more information call Jeff Persons – 617-512-3443