In the last post, we talked about other forms of social marketing you should explore.
Today we are going to go talk about how to incorporate search engine optimization (SEO) techniques into your social media marketing campaigns for better results.
Search engines are continually working to improve and increase the relevancy of their search results to enhance user experience. To accomplish this they constantly update their algorithms, refine their link building and content policies. With search engines becoming more demanding about content usage business owners must plan their online marketing strategies, including social media campaigns, to include solid SEO strategies.
There’s no doubt that the popularity of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have forced search engines to pay close attention to the content being posted by their users.
SEO Strategies for Social Media
You may not realize this, but the content you post on social networks actually gets indexed by the search engines much faster than most other types of content. In many cases, this content is indexed faster than the content on your business website. This means that by integrating SEO strategies into your social marketing campaigns you should see a definite increase in your overall results.
While basic SEO rules still apply, there are some other factors you should consider when creating content specifically for social networks. Let’s go over a few:
Keywords
This is a given. Keywords are the core of any good SEO strategy. When choosing the right keywords for a social media campaign keep in mind that the language people use on social networks is a little more relaxed than other forms of communication. You should look specifically for keywords that people would normally search on social networks.
Don’t make a huge list of targeted keywords like you would normally do for a full website SEO campaign. Instead, keep it short and sweet, and only target keyword phrases that contain 1 to 3 words.
Social Presence
As we have discussed before, it’s important to create profiles for your company on the major social networking platforms you choose to use, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. You should spend most of your focus on the platforms that are most relevant to your industry. This way you won’t spread yourself too thin and you’ll be better able to manage your campaigns effectively.
Keep in mind, creating a profile on multiple social networks isn’t enough. You should also take some time to customize your profiles to include pertinent information about yourself and your business, as well as appropriate profile graphics.
Content
When it comes to creating content to be shared on social media channels, it’s very important to target specific keywords as I mentioned earlier, but remember, you need to provide “value” to your followers. Make sure you’re sharing compelling, relevant content in a variety of different mediums including; text-based posts, reports, articles, whitepapers, podcasts, webinars, videos, infographics etc.
Remember to incorporate a “trail of breadcrumbs” for your audience to follow. You can do this by including specific calls to action, links to additional content and make sure that your posts are optimized with #hash tags to your targeted keywords.
When you take the time to employ some simple SEO strategies into your social media campaigns, you can substantially increase your overall results.
Make sure you look for our next post where we will be talking about the importance of consistency in your social media marketing campaigns.
