When social media first burst onto the scene a quarter century ago, many dyed-in-the-wool internet marketers wrote it off as a frivolous pastime ill-suited for business. It was for posting pics of spaghetti dinners and nightclubs. Not selling real goods and services.
Has that hot take aged well? In one way, they were right. Many social websites are not indexed by Google, meaning they provide few viable back links. They do not permit the large, keyword-friendly articles of a private domain. The truth is that, from an SEO standpoint, a status update is much less useful than a standard blog post.
But as anyone chronically online will tell you, those internet marketers who predicted social media wouldn’t have intersectional value in business were pretty wrong. You need only look at the modern state of the influencer ecosystem to say “told you so.”
The real value of social media is that it is largely independent from search engines, while still being able to boost SEO. Knowing which sites to focus on and how to best manipulate them is the first step toward successfully adapting to the new era in marketing.
In this article, we explore a few ways social media can benefit an online business’ SEO, and a few strategies for leveraging socials.
Identifying Trends
Websites like Digg and Reddit remain powerful platforms for uncovering trending topics, but the landscape has evolved with more advanced tools at your disposal. For instance, Google Trends, BuzzSumo, and Hootsuite are each indispensable for pinpointing what’s hot in your industry. These tools allow you to track real-time trends, analyze content performance, and discover the most engaging topics within your niche.
On Google Trends, you can see the popularity of search terms over time, which helps in identifying long-term trends and seasonal interests. BuzzSumo lets you analyze which articles are gaining the most traction across various platforms, providing insights into what type of content resonates most with your audience. And Hootsuite offers a comprehensive dashboard for monitoring social media activity and identifying trending hashtags, discussions, and influencers in your field.
Twitter’s (ahem, X’s) trending topics and LinkedIn’s trending news are also excellent for spotting current interests. The best potential subjects are often the questions and issues raised by actual consumers, not just other marketers.
By tapping into these advanced trend identification tools, you can generate new blog post ideas, optimize your keywords, and develop products that meet the immediate needs and interests of your audience. This proactive approach ensures your content stays relevant, engaging, and effective in boosting your SEO efforts.
Leveraging SEO
Social media may not be a major SEO tool, but it can still create back links and search engine recognition. Publicly-shared links on Facebook, X, LinkedIn and other sites act like any other back link.
Google’s own social network, Google+, is more directly tied to SEO, as the company takes every +1 into account. Google’s official stance is it does not take social media likes into consideration for SEO, despite persistent rumors to the contrary.
Don’t over-optimize an account at the expense of the organic interaction of social media. There are many places to post links, but social networks are unique in their ability to organize readers and customers and maintain a steady dialogue.
Gaining Traffic
The Google Panda and Penguin updates taught thousands of marketers that relying on any one source to bring in readers is a risky proposition. Since then, Google’s algorithm has continued to evolve with updates like BERT and the Core Web Vitals update, emphasizing the importance of high-quality, user-focused content and website performance.
If you rely solely on organic search traffic, your blog has to be perfectly optimized to reach interested readers and wait hours or days to be indexed. However, a business with a dedicated social media following can post a link with a descriptive blurb and attract hundreds of visitors immediately. In this way, social media platforms act as a buffer against the volatility of search engine algorithms, providing a steady flow of traffic.
Platforms like Facebook, X, Instagram and TikTok offer immediate visibility and engagement, which can drive significant traffic to your website. Engaging your audience through regular posts, stories, and live sessions helps maintain a consistent influx of visitors, regardless of search engine fluctuations. It also lets you show your fun side (unless your business is a morgue or something similar, that’s never a bad strategy!)
By integrating social media into your overall strategy, you create a more resilient and diversified approach to driving traffic, safeguarding your business from the unpredictable nature of SEO.
Getting Noticed and Boosting Engagement
In the ever-evolving realm of social media, engagement is the holy grail. It’s not just about being seen; it’s about being remembered.
Running contests, polls, and live Q&A sessions are sure-fire ways to captivate your audience. Contests, in particular, tap into our intrinsic competitive nature and the allure of winning something, which drives participation and shares. Polls offer a quick and easy way for your followers to interact with your brand, giving you valuable insights while keeping them engaged. And live Q&A sessions bring a sense of immediacy and authenticity, allowing you to connect with your audience in real-time and address their concerns directly.
User-generated content (UGC) is another powerful tool in your engagement arsenal. When your customers create content about your brand, they’re not just sharing their experiences; they’re endorsing you. Encouraging reviews, testimonials, and shares amplifies your reach and enhances credibility.
Put bluntly, people trust other people more than they trust businesses. When potential customers see real folks vouching for your product or service, it’s like hitting the SEO jackpot. It’s the digital equivalent of word-of-mouth marketing, with the added benefit of boosting your search engine rankings.
Analyzing, Tweaking, and Getting Back at It
In the data-driven world of digital marketing, intuition only gets you so far.
Enter social media analytics tools like Facebook Insights, X Analytics (formerly Twitter Analytics), and Google Analytics – your new best friends. These platforms offer an Olympic swimming pool’s worth of data that can help you demystify your audience’s behavior. Facebook Insights provides detailed metrics on your page’s performance, including likes, reach, and engagement, while X Analytics offers insights into tweet impressions, profile visits, and follower growth.
Google Analytics, the granddaddy of them all, tracks traffic, user behavior, and conversions across your website, giving you a panoramic view of your social media impact.
Tracking the performance of your social media campaigns isn’t just about counting likes and shares; it’s about understanding how these interactions translate into real-world results. By analyzing metrics like traffic, engagement, and conversions, you can gauge the effectiveness of your strategies and tweak them until those figures tick upwards.
Like many aspects of business, taking the indirect route is often more profitable in social media. Share new promotions and blog posts, but also take time to comment on newsworthy events and other players in the industry. Ask for opinions and respond to suggestions with sincere consideration. Social media brings businesses to a personal level, and that is why it has become an indispensable part of any online strategy.
