The following text provides tips on how to use social media to improve your business results, including your SEO and Google search rankings. It covers how to effectively integrate social media into an SEO campaign, and how to make the most of social media platforms.

It is essential to improve your SEO strategy as it will increase your search visibility and Google ranking. However, with so much competition it can be difficult to appear in search results, especially with more content being published every day. The best way to improve your ranking is to produce content that is informative, interesting and user-friendly.

According to WorldOMeter, marketers publish approximately five million blog posts per day.

If you want to improve your chances of appearing on search engine results, you need to have the right content strategy.

How Does Social Media Impact SEO?

Social media does not directly contribute to SEO ranking, but the links you share across social platforms increase brand exposure. They add up and influence search engine optimization in six directions:

1. Extensive content distribution
2. Longer lifespan of your posts
3. Improve online visibility and organic traffic
4. Increase brand recognition.
5. Enhance brand reputation
6. Boosts local search engine optimization (SEO)

Although your shares across social media sites do not directly impact your SEO rankings, when more people share your content it creates social signals that show your posts are useful to your target market.

Research conducted by CognitiveSEO found an exciting connection between social media shares and SEO. After analyzing 23 million social media shares on selected platforms, they discovered that the shares, likes, and comments your posts receive are important signals that Google and other search engines use to rank your website.

Social shares are often a good indicator of which pages are the best ranking pages on SERP.

Social Media Mentions and Rankings

At the Pubcon Pro 2017 conference, Google’s Gary Illyes and SEO Eric Enge had a discussion about how Google uses online mentions of a brand.

“The context in which you engage online, and how people talk about you online, actually can impact what you rank for.”

— Gary Illyes

Google is looking for the right metrics, not just vanity metrics.

More on How Social Media Supports SEO

Social media is important for SEO because it can help improve your search ranking. By promoting your content on social media, you can get more people to visit your website, which can help you improve your search ranking.

When you produce quality content that resonates with your target readers, they become advocates for your work. Why? Because you offer them something of value. Your audience will read and share your articles with their friends and followers, increasing your reach and impact.

If you create interesting and useful content, your followers will do the same, resulting in a never-ending cycle of people creating and sharing content. Keep in mind that content writing/creation is a great way to attract more attention to your site. Some types of content that drive traffic and social shares are:

• Blog posts
• Videos
• Infographics
• Podcasts

If you want to make a significant impact with your content marketing, you need to share valuable data that will help your readers and keep them coming back for more.

Social media can help you reach a larger audience for your content. When people share your content, it helps to increase traffic and improve your visibility. You can also generate backlinks through social media.

In addition certain social signals can notify Google that a website’s content is high-quality, and in turn improve the website’s search rankings.

Here are some SEO social media marketing pointers to consider, on how social affects SEO:

• Post useful materials on social media.
• Don’t forget that useful materials will help you increase your content reach and generate backlinks!
• If you want your social media profiles to rank well in search results and gain more followers, you need to provide better information.
• Quality helps build your brand community.
• You also enhance brand reputation.
• Google can use links from social media sites to help index your blog or website.
• Indexation is the process of making a website discoverable by search engines. By indexing your site, you can increase your chances of appearing in search engine results and improve your site’s ranking.

To increase engagement and social shares, start sharing content that is interesting and engaging to your audience. Additionally, make it easy for people to share your posts by using social media buttons or other sharing tools.

Many people think that social media does not have a direct impact on SEO. However, social media does correlate with the elements that influence SEO rankings.

How Does Social Media Connect with SEO?

Although social media is not a ranking factor, it can affect your search engine optimization. Social signals, or the ways that social media affects SEO, can include things like the number of social media shares or likes a piece of content gets.

The factors that Google considers when ranking a website are strengthened by signals that come from social media. When you share useful content on social media, it is more likely to be shared by your audience with their friends and followers, which increases the number of signals that Google takes into account.

Google values quality links and deems them a part of the ranking factors. When several people link back to your blog posts, it increases your blog content visibility and SEO ranking.

How to use social media for business

1. Use social media for marketing.

When you incorporate an effective social media presence into your small business marketing plan, you can reach customers and prospects where they are. Here are some tips and best practices for creating a successful presence on social media to market your brand:

• Craft a social media marketing strategy. The best way to ensure success on social media is to go in with a plan. This means devising a social media marketing strategy that includes each platform you plan to use.
• Post consistently. Your followers value a steady presence, so follow a consistent posting schedule. While being consistent, avoid posting too much, which can be off-putting for your followers.
• Develop a clear voice. Create a consistent voice and tone in your social media presence – one that resonates with your audience and influences how they see your brand. Listen to your audience and find ways to relate to them without looking like you’re trying too hard. Most importantly, don’t be afraid to show a little personality. This helps present your business as adaptive, friendly and relevant.
• Have fun with social media. Provide fun ways to generate more leads and engage with your customers, like running social media contests, linking to your website or special offers in your profile bio, and hosting live videos with exciting updates or news.
• Know your audience. Use your analytics tools to see demographic information, customer behavior and social media trends to inform your content. Knowing what your audience wants to see from you and responding accordingly can go a long way toward boosting your engagement rates.

Many small businesses fail to realize the importance of social media and how it can make or break their success. It’s important to study examples from big brands and learn from their mistakes and successes in order to create a social media strategy that will work for your business.

2. Use social media for customer service.

Since a lot of customers already use social media, it makes sense to use social media for customer service. By communicating through social media, you can solve customer problems quickly and efficiently, which will help you create a group of loyal customers.

• Respond to customer issues quickly. Many businesses approach social media as another channel for self-promotion and don’t always respond when customers comment on their posts or tweet at them. According to research from Convince & Convert, 42% of consumers expect a response to a complaint on social media within 60 minutes, and nearly one-third expect a response within half an hour. Monitoring social media channels and responding to concerns promptly can help you build strong relationships with customers.
• Use hashtags strategically. How hashtags operate within a social media platform’s algorithm is likely to change frequently, so stay updated on your social platforms’ hashtag recommendations and best practices. Hashtags help keep topics organized and easy to navigate, especially on platforms like Twitter. You can also add more information and curate content to your hashtags.
• Take public conversations private. Many angry or frustrated customers leave public comments on a brand’s Instagram and Facebook accounts or tweet at a business. While you shouldn’t ignore these messages, it’s not always wise to handle the entire encounter publicly. Show other customers that you value their input and time by sending an initial response requesting to continue the conversation privately.

3. Use social media for sales.

One of the most direct and lucrative ways to experience the power of social media is through increased sales. You can boost sales on social media in various ways:

• Advertise on social media. The major social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, have advertising platforms that help you reach your target audience and monitor your ad campaigns.
• Sell on social media. Facebook and Instagram offer sales platforms and shoppable posts that make it easy for businesses to start selling online.
• Work with brand ambassadors. Finding social media influencers or enthusiastic customers to act as brand ambassadors is an effective way to boost word-of-mouth buzz about your business and boost sales.
• Improve your business with social listening. Social listening is a process in which organizations take a macro view of what customers are saying online about the brand and use the information to improve the business. Social listening provides a broader view of industry trends and customer sentiment that may directly or indirectly impact a brand and its sales.

4. Use social media for recruiting and hiring.

In the modern hiring process, social media platforms can provide an excellent way to recruit potential talent. Social media recruiting through sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter can let employers access a broad candidate pool and efficiently sort through viable recruits.

A business’s social media platforms play an important role in recruitment by showcasing the company’s brand and values. This makes potential employees more likely to be excited about joining the team.

5. Use social media for crisis management.

In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, businesses were unsure of how to proceed on social media. Some businesses chose to send messages of support to their followers, while others remained silent.

There’s no definitive guide on how businesses should handle social media marketing during tragic events, but there are several schools of thought.

Here are some tips for using social media during a crisis:

• If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.
• Silence is rarely the correct response in a tragic situation.
• Have a social media strategy ready so you’re less likely to be caught off guard by a tragedy or other crisis.
• Choose your words carefully, and always speak from the heart.
• As soon as you hear of a tragic event, check your calendar and pause any nonessential posts.
• Look for ways your business can meaningfully help.

How to track social media ROI

When you are trying to calculate the ROI for your business’s social media, there are a few things you need to take into account. You have to think about what you want to track, how you will set up your system, and how you will monitor your progress.

• Understand your long-term goals. Ensure you understand your ultimate goal – what all your smaller, more immediate goals will build to. This end-goal vision will unify your social media efforts. Your ultimate goal should align with your business’s branding and communications guidelines.
• Pinpoint metrics to track. Once you know your goals and how to achieve them, pinpoint the metrics you want to track, including engagement, audience, reach and sentiment. Understand how you’ll apply that information to your strategy.
• Focus on quality, not quantity. Be thoughtful with your social media posts, providing carefully considered content. Your social media is there to serve your business and achieve a goal, not just to exist. Spend time considering your photos, captions and hashtags appropriately for each platform.
• Analyze spending against your success rates. Spending is one of the most straightforward metrics to measure. As you analyze the success of your campaign, be sure to consider all the money spent and how it was utilized.

It is not enough to simply understand the social media tips that are essential for success, you must also implement them in your marketing content. Additionally, it is important to track your performance to identify areas that need improvement.

Do you have more tips on how to market effectively on social media? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

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