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Using Social Media

Guest post by: David Abernethy

Article Overview: Use Social Media sites to help build your site visibility Following the simple points in this article on using the key Social Media sites, will help you build your business.

Using Social Media

1.Does Social Media Use Improve Your Google Page Ranking? – Many key industry sources, including critically, Google themselves confirm that Page Rank is affected by social media use.

Google stress that quality matters more than quantity, and have highlighted not just social user share but Social authority of the user - the higher the authority of the social user sharing the content, the more value is given: shares of the item - the more shares, e.g. likes/tweets are recorded of the content, the more attention algorithmically it will receive: Traffic consideration - content that has noticeable share levels leads to increased traffic, and gives entire site higher rankings: Local signals - pages with more feedback, and more geo-locational signals receive greater consideration in Google Places.

Bing have confirmed that their rankings are also influenced by Social Media usage, and we have seen one published study which tracked the effect of strong social media use, on their Google Page Rank, and found a direct improvement.

2. Which Are The Key Social Media Sites? - We scanned our 5 key competitors. They use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn Digg, Delicious, Facebook, MySpace, Stumbleupon, and Reddit. This corresponds closely to the published stats, for the highest volume social media sites, plus increasingly also Google+.

3. Which Are The Key Sectors and Users? - The categories are widening steadily. From purely personal/social use initially, a wide range of commercial sector products now feature including Food and Drink, Fashion.

There is a close parallel with internet use from the 1990’s onwards – initially used for information, travel, music, the purchase pattern has widened steadily to now include clothing, food and major purchases.

Similarly with user patterns, the social media sites were almost exclusively for the young at the outset, but use by 55+ is growing strongly – possibly the fastest growing user group.

4.What Social Media Presence Do you Need? – For both Facebook and Twitter, a simple presence is fine, possibly spanning links to main website, Wall, i.e. image gallery, testimonials, discussions, blog, newsletter sign up.

Our scan showed considerable differences in approach on where the company blog is located – options included; on the main website, with Twitter, and within Facebook. Key point is to have a blog, or a highly active news release page to hold the messages used to generate followers/share.

For Twitter, in addition to opening a Business Account for the Company, it can be useful for key team members to open Twitter accounts also.

5. How Do You Build Share/Followers? – You need an active communication process - ask/tell your clients to follow and use (with Twitter) for communication and news updates: summarize interesting industry trends/developments, highlight upgrades/changes in your product range/service proposition: mention team changes: summarize anything that you would feature in an article or a news release.

Following these simple steps will start to deliver you new benefits from social media use.

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Article Tags: Social media, social media sites



Related Forum Posts
Re: Kevin needs "social glue" ideas - Hi, I like the idea of "10 items that could act as "social glue" because I am an internet marketer. But I agree with the rest that the 10 recent post is nice. Maybe we should open up a new section in the forums on Social Media...or Social Media Marketing. I will tell you that the world is about 1 1/2 behind when it comes to understanding social media. Building a section now will put EvanCarmichael.com is a great position a year down the road when people realize Social Media can produce more traffic than SEO. Jeff
Re: Kevin needs "social glue" ideas - [quote="WebBizIdeas.com":gvtxsu7g]Hi, I like the idea of "10 items that could act as "social glue" because I am an internet marketer. But I agree with the rest that the 10 recent post is nice. Maybe we should open up a new section in the forums on Social Media...or Social Media Marketing. I will tell you that the world is about 1 1/2 behind when it comes to understanding social media. Building a section now will put EvanCarmichael.com is a great position a year down the road when people realize Social Media can produce more traffic than SEO. Jeff[/quote:gvtxsu7g] Hi Jeff, Thanks for the suggestion. Why don't you start a new post (with a poll) to see if there's enough interest in your idea for a social media section?
Re: UPDATES: New Campaign! New Layout! New Ideas! - GT - thanks for the FYI - I'm not sure if we'll put a link back. Something to consider though! Trent - the new category is "Social Network and Media" which was put in to compliment the Online Businesses category that currently exists. Overall the new categories are: - Looking For, Networking and Events - Review My... - Social Network and Media - Brags and Rants These came as a result of Ringo doing research on other forums and thinking about what could be improved on ours to give a better experience for everyone. I hope you enjoy them! David, I'm looking forward to reading your Brag / Rant!
Re: Marketing 2.0 - What Are Your Thoughts - Hi Shri, Thanks for posting this. I also read it and I believe Social Media is here to stay, until the next best thing comes up. Social media proved to be useful for me many times and I think everyone should use it for their business.
Re: Social Media Marketing Ignorance - [quote="vbn411":7qciluxl]Social Media is space that you have to be in to succeed in our current climate. People are going to be discussing your brand / product whether you like it or not, so you might as well join the conversation and add value. [/quote:7qciluxl] I think that's probably one of the most realistic way to think about it. There's no real textbook way of understanding Social Media, it's the networks of people and their interactions that will exist with or without your input. As for Jennifer, You can always have 2 Facebook pages. Many people do. There is also LinkedIn, which is like a professional networking version of Facebook. The only way to know is to try it.


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