The Importance of Your Social Media Presence
You may think social media is just an SEO bonus, but it serves a distinct and important purpose for your business and web presence. Google uses your social media as part of how it determines your ranking; the more active you seem, the better off you’ll be. There are a few different ideas on the right schedule to get Google to see you as active, but, despite the debates, there’s merit to each strategy.
Why is Your Social Media Presence Important?
First off, let’s start by answering the big question here: why does it matter? Many people think that, once they conquer blog maintenance, they’re done with their SEO efforts, but that’s far from the case.
Your social media plays a crucial role in getting your content seen by a wider audience and helps to show search engines like Google that you have an active presence on your site. If you’ve done an excellent job at maintaining a regular schedule with your blog but still haven’t seen an improvement in traffic and leads, it’s time to start focusing some of that attention on your social media presence.
How to Improve Your Social Media Presence
In order to achieve your desired results of improved traffic and more leads, you have to step up your game. No one ever improved by doing the exact same thing they’ve always done. In order to keep an edge on your competition, you have to do more with both your blog and your social media, but how do you do that?
Make and Stick to a Social Media Schedule
The first step in successfully stepping up your social media game is planning out the right schedule for your business. While many marketing agencies will tell you they know the perfect number of weekly posts it takes to improve your SEO, the truth is that there are a variety of ways to reach the finish line. The ideal number of social media posts for you to make depends on the size of your business, the budget and/or time you have to allot to the project, and the scope of the results you’re hoping to achieve.
If you run a large business, like a franchise, or one that relies heavily on social media, like a venue for musical performances, you’ll need to post quite frequently to attract the large audience you’re after. If you run a small ma-and-pa business, like a small local diner or mechanic, you may only need to post about three to four times a week. When deciding the right schedule for your business, consider the following:
- How many times do you currently post? Is it leading to new likes each month or week (depending on your goals)?
- What sort of time or budget do you have to devote to this? Can you handle it or afford to have someone else deal with it?
- How big are your goals? Have you set ones that are achievable with a slight change rather soon or are they more challenging long-term goals?
- How large is your current social media presence? Have you done well so far to build up an audience or are you still struggling?
What to Post to Your Social Media Pages
What you post matters, especially when it comes to attracting a wider audience and generating new leads. You should keep your plugs (what you write on/about the posts you’re sharing) short, sweet, and catchy (funny often works as well); you want them to captivate the audience and get them to follow through to your page and website. For good examples, see Wendy’s Facebook page and Vogue’s Instagram; both use a good mix of video content, images, and even links to written content.
The content you’re sharing matters, too. You should make sure that you’re sharing a mix of 1/3 informational content (blog posts, articles, helpful resources, videos) and 2/3 social posts (posts that aren’t trying to push information; can include memes, images, youtube clips, .gifs, etc.). This will keep your audience hooked and entertained without bogging them down or boring them with too many long articles.
How to Manage Events
Events can be a great way to attract more people to your social media pages and website. Whether these are fundraisers or open-houses your company is putting together or just an electronic giveaway your offering, events can be great marketing opportunities. There are three stages to managing the event, though: creating the event, inviting people to it and distributing it, and posting on the event page leading up to and during the event. We’ll provide you with a brief description of each of these stages in the sections below.
Creating the Event
This is where you’ll really put your SEO/Social Media skills to the test. When you create the event, you want to be sure to keep your SEO tools in mind. Give it a captivating title with keywords; interesting and inviting description of what all the event entails; complete and accurate information as to the date, time, and location of the event; and related images that help sell the event.
Inviting People to the Event and Distribution
Inviting people to the event is the easy part; invite everyone on your friends’ list to the event. Try to cater it to those that are close by, know someone close by, or would care about the type of event, so as not to aggravate anyone. Distribution is a little trickier; this is the part where you push your event into every group, page, and person to whom this event could be relevant.
The idea behind this is that, when you say you’re going to an event or interested in an event, it shows up on your friends’ newsfeeds. If you’re advertising the event to new people to whom you’ve never spoken or whom you’ve even met, you gain not only, but all of their friends. If just one of their friends shows interest in the event as well, your reach has doubled with no extra effort on your part whatsoever.
Posting on the Event Page
The last part of effectively managing events is posting in the event page. You want to do this sparingly; don’t bombard your guests, but remind them every once in a while about the event coming up. For example, you could reveal something about the event that was previously withheld or remind them of how close it is, complete with a question about which part the guests are most excited to see or do. On the day of the event, post reminders of the start and end time, along with video and picture updates to show those that choose not to come what they’re missing so they might change their minds.
What If This Sounds Like It’s Just Too Much for You
We’re all busy and, if you’re a business owner or the manager of a company, you have very little time you can afford to spend on your business’s social media presence. It takes a lot more time and effort than you’d think. You can hire a social media manager to take over all aspects of your social media presence for you, from posting new content to answering comments to creating events.
It’s important to note, though, that if you want to improve your SEO, you’ll need to grow your social media presence. In order to do that, you’re going to need to put more effort in: posting more frequently, distributing posts in relevant groups, commenting as the page, communicating with other pages as the page, etc. This takes quite a bit of time, energy, and know-how to be done correctly. That being said, if you hire someone to do it, expect to pay a pretty penny.