In today’s climate marketers are been pushed more and more to increase performance on fewer resources, this is exactly why more companies are turning towards SEO and social media.
These two elements of online promotion are powerful, however it would be a mistake to think you can use one and ignore the other. You see in my mind there are strong reasons to combine the two in order to push forward your online promotion.
What I really wanted to get across in this post was, how having a well thought out social strategy can boost your search engine optimisation efforts. Rand at SEOmoz posted recently about social media marketing being time consuming and lacking in ROI. This maybe true, in fact up until 12 months ago I was firmly of this opinion, that social media marketing, simply did not warrant my attention as social traffic was not profitable. I have changed my mind since and seen the advantages of social marketing on my blog 
| Search Engine Optimisation | Social Media Marketing |
| - Keyword Research | - Audience ID |
| - Competition Analysis | - Define Objectives |
| - Implementation | - Strategy |
| - Decide Tactics | - Decide Tactics |
Likewise when it comes to social media there is no point becoming involved in social media groups that have little interest in your industry or product. Even if your simply looking to build credibility your only going to do that in a social circle that is an authority on your topic.
If your into to social media simply for fun, which many are, defining objectives is not important. If you have a business your trying to build you need to get clear on what your social media efforts are going to bring to the table. (You may simply want to boost your backlink generation )
When it comes to social media marketing there are also no real secrets, your main strategy will be creating quality content (this will also come into your SEO strategy or implementation). This content does not only need to be good quality but it must also aim to encourage user participation. (If you don’t have the old ADDTHIS button yet, now might be a good time) Also within your content, express your interest in your readers, encourage them to leave feedback, comments and to share things they like.
The content you are producing is going to be optimised or as I like to put it “keyword focused”. You are going to want that content to be shared all over the web right, so make sure that your always on topic, every social circle you become involved with must know exactly what your about.
This is particularly helpful for new sites, ranking your own pages will be difficult but ranking a page on Digg is much easier. Choose your mediums wisely and the content you push out there, SEO alone will take time to rank and the rewards will be limited, social media alone would be like driving a car with no steering wheel, sure you will get traffic but is it coming from where you want? Are you directing your content towards the right people. Using SEO and Social media marketing together can bring about great results.
- There is no better way to get your content out there, if you create quality content this is going to provide you with quality links. These links are 100% natural, the ones Google likes best. These new links will be harder to find without social marketing and getting them will only have a positive impact on your rankings.
- Social media is a great way to manage your or your companies reputation. It allows you to get people out there talking about you or your company. You can use it as a platform to display your expertise or product, to show what people will get by visiting your site. We all know the emphasis that has been placed on brands recently, what better way is there to build one?
- I touched on this earlier, but will mention it again. If your site is new your going to struggle to rank at first. Use your keyword research to rank some social pages, this will drive traffic via search engines without even ranking your own site. It doesn’t matter if your using videos, twitter, digg whatever….make sure you are using
your keyword research.
I am far from a social media expert but these are definitely some of the areas I have seen real results in so far. For me one of the best aspects of social marketing is building relationships, social media allows you to mix with people who are willing to open windows that SEO alone cannot.
Thanks to all those who enjoy reading SEO Wizz, and those who have referred people here.
Tim
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Nice post here! It really depends what you want out of your site. If you are trying to make lots of money with Adsense, it might be best to just focus heavily on SEO with very little social networking every now and then.
If you are trying to become popular, obviously social networking and branding is the way to go.
Kai,
Yes I totally agree, if your simply looking to pick up adsense cheques then social media isn’t as profitable, however the links will help dominate your niche
For me though SEO is changing and to build a business online social networking is a must.
Thanks for the ideas. I’ve found using Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to be useful tools in getting qualified, interested people to my sites. I look forward to the time when clients expect a social networking plan as well as an SEO plan.
@Fisher,
The problem with trying to implement a social netwoking plan for a customer, is that it is really difficult to quatify. For instance, how will you measure performance? Traffic? Brand Awareness? Stumbles or Diggs?
It’s hard to implement even though a lot of companies are starting to delve into these areas. I think, from an SEO perspective, a possible social media idea would be to help clients publish link worthy content, content that will appeal to the wider linkerati. This will encourage links which is all part and parcell of SEO.
Thanks for the comment, hope to see you around again