Every day, there are more than 500 million tweets sent out onto Twitter. Approximately 30 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook each month. On a social networking website that has loads of traffic, how do you attract attention?
Whether you intend to use Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter for business purposes, it’s important to understand the potential of each website. While there are millions of Twitter users, for instance, you will only reach out to the masses if you incorporate SEO.
The fact of the matter is that a basic 140-character update may help you garner attention, but it can do even more for you if it has the right keywords and insightful hyperlinks. Why not tap into its potential?
The basics to apply SEO to your social media strategy
SEO often comes to mind when businesses are looking at ways to drive traffic to their websites, but there are ways you can apply SEO to your social media strategy as well.
One of the easiest ways to start improving your SEO is to ensure that there are keywords in your social networking profiles. For instance, you should have relevant keywords in your Twitter bio to improve the chances of people finding you on the network. The keywords you select should be similar to the ones you have on your company website.
Once you have relevant content and keywords in your social media profiles, you should shift your focus to doing the same in terms of your updates. This means incorporating keywords that relate to your business in your tweets and status updates to your followers. For example, if your company deals with computer software, you may want to include “#tech” or “#software” at the end of your updates to reach out to people searching for these types of topics.
Finally, you need to make sure that your social media updates are sharable. This means that your profiles should be public and there should be buttons that people can easily click to share your updates with their audience.
Going Above and Beyond
Just as you have an SEO strategy for your company website, it may be a good idea to create a plan that you can refer back to for social media. As you get the hang of the basics of social networking and SEO, you can start utilizing additional tactics to yield better results.
For instance, making it a point to only provide insightful, informational updates to your followers can help you improve SEO. Just as Google appreciates worthwhile content, social networking websites do as well. Furthermore, people are more likely to share your content if it offers something unique to their audience.
Curating content is an option as you start to make your presence known on sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Curation is ideal if you are looking to update frequently, but may not have the time to dish out fresh content on a regular basis. In order to maintain SEO value, you can curate content that includes previously published information, as well as unique insight from your company.
Mashable defines this content curation method as “mashup.” Just as the word insinuates, your updates should combine existing content with original content to create one useful update to your followers.
Social networking websites have changed the way that all companies do business, and SEO is helping them reach out to individuals who need their goods and services. As more people join sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, it will only become harder for companies to distinguish themselves. Creating a strategy that includes the basics – keywords, hyperlinks and valuable content – can help professionals maneuver around the challenges that arise.