Dec 07 2011

Getting More SEO Value from Your Social Updates

Twitter reportedly has over 100 million users. Even if 40% of those users have never sent a single tweet, there are still nearly 250 million tweets every day by the more active users to make up for their silence. How many tweets go out from your handle every day, adding to the noise? 1? 5? 20? Let’s assume the majority of your followers are following 99 other Twitter personalities (for a nice even 100). How many tweets are those 99 profiles sending out a day? Add those all up and suddenly your 2-3 tweets are nothing more than a drop in the bucket. The majority of your followers might only actually see a small percentage of your tweets, and click on the links in even less. If no one sees your tweet, did it really happen?

The simple truth is that social media is a huge, cluttered and chaotic world. Millions (if not billions) of accounts on dozens of social networking sites are active at different degrees of usage. Billions of pieces of content are shared every day. There are videos, posts, status updates, link, contests, articles, photos, reviews—you name it and it can be found on a social network. How are your Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/Google+ updates supposed to compete?

Create a more targeted message

In most scenarios, more is better. You want to sell more products, drive more traffic, build more links and get more followers, right? But the problem with social media marketing is that there is so much “more” for people to find that it’s easy for your message to get lost in the shuffle. Instead of trying to reach the biggest audience possible, why not hone in on a very specific segment of your target audience and create a social networking update aimed directly at them?

You might be reaching out to a smaller audience, but you are reaching out with content that caters directly to their needs and wants as an audience. Content designed to appeal to everyone is often a little bland and watered down. Why not gives your brand a real chance to connect and update your social profiles with content/messaging that targets a very specific audience. Targeted content is more likely to get shared because it provides readers with real, unique value.

Stagger your updates.

Don’t dump all your content for the day at one time. One of the keys to a successful social media marketing strategy is consistency. Let’s say your daily business blog post goes live at 9 AM. You have your social profiles hooked up to the blog’s RSS feed so it automatically posts at 9 AM as well. Why not repost it at 2 PM? Think about it, in order for someone to see your update they have to be logged into their account and actively scrolling their feed when your post goes live. 30 seconds too soon or too late and your posts are buried under more recent updates.

By reposting your content you are giving it a second chance at being noticed by your social network. You also have to take into consideration when your audience is most likely to be active. Would an early morning update get more responses? Should you post more frequently during lunch? You want to make it as easy as possible for someone to find and interact with your brand on social networks, and that means fitting your updates into their schedule. Too many brands still think that people will just come to them on a social networking site; you have give your audience a reason to interact with your profile!

Promote everything.

The how-to video you just posted to YouTube? Publish it on Facebook and tweet the link. The guest post you wrote for an industry blog that went live this morning? Share it in some of your LinkedIn Groups. The new product page you added to your website? Introduce the product on your Google+ profile. Facebook marketing groups also work great!

Social networking profiles don’t just have to be for telling your audience where you’re off to for lunch. Every single piece of content you create that is public and shareable can be used as social media marketing fodder. You never know what blog post, online press release or company newsletter is going to catch the eye of a potential customer. The more content you promote, the more links it can earn, the more touch points you create and the larger the audience is that you can interact with.

About the Author – Nick Stamoulis

Nick Stamoulis is an SEO consultant and the Founder of Boston SEO company Brick Marketing. With over 12 years of SEO experience, Nick Stamoulis share his SEO knowledge by posting daily articles to his blog, the Search Engine Optimization Journal, and by publishing the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter, read by over 150,000 opt-in subscribers.

Contact Nick Stamoulis at 781-999-1222 or nick@brickmarketing.com

2 Responses to “Getting More SEO Value from Your Social Updates”

  1. Black Cohosh says:
    December 8, 2011 at 2:45 am

    Every time I drop by here I read an interesting tip. And social media is something where I’ve been lacking. All my current sites have been niche sites that don’t lend themselves to that sort of thing.

    But I just registered a domain for a more general blog in the health niche. And this is the type of thing where I know social media can be useful. But if you’ve never done it, it can be confusing.

    Thanks again

  2. Chris Faber says:
    December 9, 2011 at 12:18 am

    “If you post duplicate content over multiple accounts or multiple duplicate updates on one account;” [https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311-the-twitter-rules]

    Repeating tweets is defined as spam in the Twitters rules and can lead to the suspension of the account.