Had a great question from a client the other day that I thought I’d share my insights on. Now I’m no social media expert nor do I offer the service, but I always stress that the importance of social media metrics are continuing to grow, so as a business owner or online marketer you really need to get with it and start engaging and growing your social media presence sooner than later!
The question was:
Why do So Many Businesses Say “Like us on Facebook” (besides the obvious…)
My response:
Great question! The advantages are to increase engagement by growing the fan base through Facebook (same goes for Twitter) and to increase the social media metrics as viewed by the search engines.
1) The more fans/followers you get the better your engagement will be, so when you post new blog posts or discounts or contents (as examples) the more outreach/social media exposure you will get.
2) The other benefits (that most social media enthusiasts probably don’t even realize) is that the social media metrics (Facebook fans, # of likes, # of shares, Twitter followers, retweets, etc.) are starting to play an increasing influence on the actual SEO rankings
and overall site authority.
From my experience the current algorithm breakdown:
- 40% on page factors (title tags, meta descriptions, keyword rich content, etc.)
- 50% off page factors (link building)
- 10% (and growing) social media metrics
So it’s really about increasing both the engagement with your customers online by utilizing the various social media platforms, but then also thinking forward to how the search engines will continue to change (social media is growing in importance and will continue to do so), but on page content and links are still gold and always will be. To “win” you need to engage in ethical SEO and PPC while writing quality content on your blog and socializing that content across your social media networks.
That’s why a lot of companies will only offer discounts, or entry into contests if you “Like us on facebook/twitter” or “share and like this photo”… they want to increase both awareness/engagement while boosting their social media metrics as well.
Will be sharing more of my insights to client questions as they come in so be sure to keep visiting the blog and follow me on twitter for more updates 🙂
