The difference between social media and SEO

Social media and SEO are often spoken about alongside each other, with many suggesting that social media mentions impact the search engine results. While there can be an overlap, there are many fundamental differences between the two and the purpose of partaking in each is very different.

How can social media impact SEO?

There are a number of ways that social media may be impacting SEO. It is believed by some (but has never been confirmed) that Google, and perhaps other search engines, use social media mentions as one of their ranking factors.

The theory here is that the more Facebook likes, Tweets and Google + 1s a site has, the more popular a site is. This, in turn, may signal that a site is of good quality, thus justifying higher search rankings. There are also theories around the amount of online mentions a brand has, known as co-citation, whereby more online mentions of a company or a website leads to being given more authority in the search engines.

Mentions in social media can therefore make the search engines more aware of a brand and the industry they are in. Links from other websites are important in SEO and links from social media can help in this way too. The other main SEO benefit of social media is the very purpose of social media – branding. The more successfully social media is being used, the more well known a brand becomes. This can lead to more people writing about a brand and linking to their website, thus assisting SEO.

While there can be a strong overlap between these two forms of online marketing, the purpose of each and how each is used are very different.

Social media

The purpose of social media is primarily to build a brand and increase a brand’s visibility. With social media becoming more popular, the more a brand is covered across social media and the more times people see it, the more likely they are to be aware of it. There are many other things, though, that companies can achieve through the use of social media. 

A key benefit is that it can be used to build relationships with potential customers. Social media can be a great way of interacting with people and businesses before they become customers. Often people want information about a company before they commit and it is a good way of getting this information across. It allows a company to put a face to their brand, show they are interesting and, where appropriate, show their creative or humorous side.

Another use of social media is to make customers and potential customers more aware of what a brand is up to. This can be in the form of promoting specific campaigns, updating people on changes and showing off success. Brands can show they are on the pulse and up to date with the latest happenings in their industry. They can comment on industry developments and engage with people, including customers, potential customers, industry commentators, and even competitors. This helps in not just generating new business, but in customer retention too.  Queries and criticism can be easily and quickly responded to so social media can be used as a form of fire fighting.

SEO

The purpose of SEO is very different to that of social media. It is much easier to define and the main purpose has three stages to it; to improve search engine rankings, which increases traffic to a website, resulting in an increase in business.

The purpose of SEO is often seen as being simply to improve rankings for a set of keywords but, while this forms the basic aim of an SEO campaign, there is more to it than this. The ultimate goal is to increase business, meaning that the right family of keyword terms need to be targeted. Areas that people search for need to be targeted for a campaign to be successful; there is little point in investing a lot in being ranked well for things people don’t search for. Good quality traffic is also really important, meaning conversions need to be considered as well as the pure number of visitors being captured.

Inevitably, businesses have specific areas they wish to target. This can be areas where they are currently struggling, areas where they feel there is the potential for growth, or areas where there is a current promotion. SEO can be used to generate business related to specific products and services.

The real purpose of SEO is making a website more attractive to the search engines while improving them for visitors at the same time. Having the right content, good internal linking, and perhaps having a blog are all key and things that help in a search ranking. They want to rank the websites that meet the needs of visitors the best. This has always been the case but they are getting better at establishing this.

Different purposes of social media and SEO

The specific purposes of social media and SEO are very different. Social media is essentially about branding and communicating with customers and potential customers while SEO is about increasing rankings in the search engines that lead to good quality traffic. The overall aim of both, though, is to increase business. Social media does this by interacting with people and making them more aware of a brand, while SEO does it by improving the rankings for things that potential customers will search for when seeking products or services.

Some thoughts on social media content creation

I read recently that in 2013, brands are posting an average of 36 times per month on Facebook. Over a year that adds up to 432 posts. That’s a lot of content. With the average Facebook user liking 40 pages each, they’re now seeing a whopping 1440 updates every month (source).

A good social media marketing strategy will help you stand out to some extent from the background chatter, but strategy is only half the battle. What you really need to think about is content quality.

It’s hard to maintain consistency in your content when you’re producing it at scale, especially with limited resources. But quantity shouldn’t mean a sacrifice in quality. Consider these six questions before you post anything on social platforms:

1. Why am I posting this?

The content aspect of your social media marketing strategy needs to start with why and repeat on loop ad infinitum. If you’re not constantly asking why – you should be! Same goes for your content.

The content is not an afterthought, it is not filler, it isn’t a box to tick. Posting content because it’s funny or because you have to post something isn’t good enough. Neither is posting because the boss asked you to, or because it got a lot of engagement when your competitors did it.

The answer you’re looking for is this: ‘because it is relevant to the community you are trying to reach and provides value.’

And by value I don’t mean it saves them money. I’m talking about entertainment, information, advice. Value is what makes your content special. Value is what makes content shareable. Value is a customer insight, not a brand insight, and it’s the reason people want to engage with you on social platforms.

If you just do the same thing as everyone else, then you aren’t providing any value at all. If your content isn’t valuable and relevant, post something else. Better yet, don’t post anything. Go back to the drawing board and ask why you’re on social platforms in the first place.

2. Who is it for?

Your community is not your customers. Agreed, your customers are in there, coiled in anticipation for the chance to click on a link to your latest product, but they aren’t going to do that unless your content speaks to them directly.

A consistent tone of voice will help. Your brand on social media platforms should sound like your brand everywhere else. Hopefully it sounds like someone your customers want to talk to. If not, fix that first, then come back. The post can wait.

It’s no good developing a fun, irreverent tone in order to ‘talk to the younger generation’ if your brand doesn’t always talk like that and your customers aren’t those same younger generation. It’s also no good being too sales-focused. You need to talk to your community, not at them. Think about the way your customers speak, think about the dialect and jargon specific to your location or industry. Make the content speak to your target audience. Rewrite or redesign until you get it right, review and optimise your tone and style regularly.

You’ll reach more people talking to the right people than trying to reach more people by talking to everyone.

3. What do I want to achieve?

Most social media content is confused. The call to action isn’t clear and it fails by trying to do too much.

Recently I saw this update: ‘How was your weekend? What are you going to do today?’

Two questions, two calls to action, low engagement. The questions cancel each other out. This should have been two separate posts, if it was the right thing to post in the first place. Remembering to put one call to action per post will save your engagement rate along with your blushes.

The type of update you post also affects engagement - take Facebook for example. If you’re asking a question, then the goal of the post is comments. A simple status update will generate more comments than an image, but an image will generate more shares. So if you’re looking for amplification, post an image.

Everything you post should want to achieve something. If it doesn’t, then don’t post.

4. When am I posting this?

If and when you schedule a TV ad, chances are you try and do it at a time when your target audience are sitting down in front of the TV. Your social content strategy needs to take time into account also.

When are your audience online? When are they on Facebook? Check the data, find out. The days of ‘this has to go on out immediately’ should be well in the past. Your audience dictates when you post.

The half-life of a tweet is seven minutes. Depending on your engagement, the half-life of a Facebook post averages at around two hours (much less if you post poor content). Post at the wrong time and you’ll turn an urgent message into an unread one.

5. Where am I posting this?

A tweet has room for 140 of your finest characters. A Facebook status however, has room for 63,206 characters. That’s around 10,000 words, depending on the words.

Should you post a 10,000 word status update? NO!

The point is this: not all content works on all platforms, not all platforms engage with content in the same way, and each platform is home to a different community.

On Tumblr, 60% of all reblogs are images, and using animated GIFs will ensure you get more of those reblogs. On Instagram, emotive images get more likes. On Pinterest, adding a price to your image leads to more click-throughs.

Each platform you choose to operate in needs its own content strategy. If the piece of content you want to post isn’t right for a particular platform, don’t post it there.

The platform-specific optimisations are many and minute, but it’s these one-percents that will give your content an extra boost, not a blanket of platform-agnostic mediocrity.

6. How else can I say this?

Ernest Hemingway once said, ‘The first draft of anything is shit’. He probably wasn’t talking about Facebook posts, but still. Too many updates are written once and posted first time.

The first thing you write might be adequate, but if adequate isn’t good enough for your product design, for your television ads or your customer service, then adequate shouldn’t be good enough for your social content.

Adequate is a failure. Be better.

Good copy is as little copy as possible. Can you say it in fewer words? Can you say it visually?

Think about your own news feed. What do you like to see? What would you click on?

Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. And when you’re done, write it again.

Once you’ve asked yourself these six questions, you should be confident that you’ve got a solid, valuable piece of social content on your hands.

But there is a final variable in the social content equation that is just as important: you.

If you wouldn’t read it, if you wouldn’t comment or share or click, don’t post it.

Your community won’t tolerate bad content. You shouldn’t either.

Google Plus Local for business explained

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Creating a Google Plus Local Business Page and linking it to your Google Places Listing

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10 Tips for a new Twitter user

These are the 10 things I wish someone would have told me when I first started using Twitter:

Start with the right Twitter name

Think before you leap. It could be your full name, first and last. It could be your company name. Whatever it is, keep it simple. Make sure it’s easy to spell. Don’t use a series of numbers and other characters such as a Twitter name like @Me2987632. It needs to be catchy and easy to remember.

I suggest you also need to keep the name as short as possible while also being unique and descriptive. While Twitter gives you 15 characters, those 15 characters will slice into someone’s 140 character limit when sending a tweet.

Finally, decide the purpose of the account. Building your company brand, make it your company name if possible. So in essence, short, descriptive, unique, easy to spell and easy to remember. It’s not easy. Spend some time on it. Remember, you can always change your name, but it not something I would recommend doing.

Find a niche then find 100 good people to follow

One of the main tips given by Twitter users is to go to a Twitter directory, search by category and find all of the most “influential” people in that category. I believe it is more important to keep it simple at first. Think of the one person who influences you most in a particular niche. See if they are on Twitter. Just a simple Google search will find these people. The truly influential people will not only have a lot of followers but only follow a few hundred people back. These few hundred people are Twitter gold.

Think about it. You’re famous. You don’t have much time. You’re followed by hundreds of thousands. So if you follow only a couple of hundred, you make those count. So go to that person’s profile and click on the link to view their followers. Take a look at their profiles. Think they look interesting? Follow them.

Along the lines of following, be careful about the people you choose to follow down the road. You’ll get new followers and the instinct will be to follow back. First look at their profile. Look at their recent history. If they interact with others and generally look interesting, feel free to follow back. It’s important to know at this stage that if you follow spammers, they will spam your inbox. This is not a good option.

Create a descriptive bio

Twitter allows 160 characters to describe yourself. Make them count. Use key words that describe the things you are passionate about. People will find you in searches based on that description.

Also, if you have a blog, make sure to put it in the URL portion of your profile. Easy traffic.

Choose a unique and scaleable profile photo

It could be as easy as a close-up photo of yourself. Or maybe it’s your company logo. Whatever it is, you’ll want it to be unique and eye catching. When someone sees it in their feed, they’ll know it’s you. It should be clear and easy to see when it’s a 60×60 thumbnail. But when you upload it to Twitter, it should be large and it should be square. When someone clicks on the small thumbnail, they’ll get a close-up. It should be of high quality, and square because otherwise the photo you want to represent you will be cropped and become misshaped.

Whatever you choose, you’ll probably want to stick with it for a while. You’ll be amazed how people will scan their timeline for images, not names, for picking out what to read. If you change your photo, you may actually cut back on eyeballs reading your content.

Find a popular hashtag in your niche, follow it and use it

People use the hashtag symbol # before relevant keywords (no spaces) in their Tweet to categorize those Tweets and help them show more easily in Twitter Search.

Clicking on a hashtagged word in any message shows you all other Tweets in that category.

Hashtags can occur anywhere in the Tweet – at the beginning, middle, or end.

Hashtagged words that become very popular are often Trending Topics.

Included the hashtag #FF. Users created this as shorthand for "Follow Friday," a weekly tradition where users recommend people that others should follow on Twitter. You'll see this on Fridays. Don't #spam #with #hashtags. Don't over-tag a single Tweet. (Best practices recommend using no more than 2 hashtags per Tweet.)

Use hashtags only on Tweets relevant to the topic.

So find a hashtag that is important for your niche, follow it, and use it when appropriate.

Use a desktop and mobile app

There are several software programs that can be used such as Hootsuite or TweetDeck. Decide on which program you wish to use.

Ensure you use this app. On your mobile phone device as it will allow you to keep up to date with your timeline and make tweets on the go — including photos from your phone which helps you be more interesting.

While it may seem less necessary to use a desktop app if you have only one Twitter account, I’d still advise it. Very good for separating all of your content (replies, direct messages, specific search terms) and getting alerts. It can also link to other services, like photo sharing services and a link shortener.

Supplement your daily tweets with photos, links and video

You want to be more than a person who tweets streams of consciousness. You want to tweet interesting info, and that often comes in the form of a photo, link or video. Again, this is where a photo sharing and link shortener tool will come in handy.

Every day, share some links. It could be retweeting something someone else said or it could be simply finding a great article and sharing it. But it will make you interesting if you can share valuable info with others. And also make an effort to share photos when you’re at an interesting event. Are you at a local fair, has your local community organized fund raising? Great opportunity to share some photos.

Set a goal for number of unsolicited replies and retweets per day

When I decide whether or not I’ll follow someone, one of the characteristics I like to see is whether they interact with their followers. If all you do is tweet out your personal thoughts, you’re probably pretty boring. If someone replies to a tweet or retweets something you did, absolutely respond to them. And while you’re at it, send a direct message personally thanking the people who follow you. But even more importantly, follow your timeline closely and find good information to either retweet or start a conversation.

Get into the habit. If that means setting a goal every day, do it.

Be brief, descriptive and articulate

This is an art form. You want to be brief. They say to try and keep tweets under or around 120 characters so that a follower can manually retweet the message and add their own voice. If you take up 140 characters all the time, that’s impossible.

But you can’t just focus on brevity, you need to actually be descriptive and interesting. I know, that’s hard. It takes practice. But make sure that whatever tweet you’re putting out there has value.

Be articulate. Avoid cursing. Avoid shortening words. Whatever you do in 120-ish characters, try to follow typical spelling and grammar rules. It still needs to make sense, and studies have shown that tweets that are easy to read and don’t butcher the English language are more likely to be retweeted.

Be active, but don’t overdo it

Inactive people are boring to follow. So make an effort to share something interesting every day. It doesn't have to be a lot, but just share something. Be consistent.

But don’t overdo it. If you follow 50 people, you might not notice how annoying an extremely active person can be. Once you follow 500 or more people, you’ll get it. Don’t get into back-and forth conversations with someone that have no value to others listening in. Move it to a direct message. Before you tweet anything, ask if it will have value to those reading it.

There is no right or wrong number of tweets. I definitely wouldn't suggest anything more than 50 in a day. And you can easily get away with five to 10. But the number can also be more — or even less — depending on the value of information you’re sharing.

Google Places is dead - long live Google+ Local

If you own a local business and people can actually visit your establishment, you simply must create a business listing on Google+ Local Pages. If you don’t currently have any kind of Google Local listing for your business, you are missing out on a MASSIVE (and simple) opportunity to increase awareness for your business.

The new Google+ Local Pages have officially replaced Google Places - and you really need to get on board. Google Places has been simply a directory type, location based listing; which has now been replaced with Google+ Local Pages. This gives you much more functionality and can greatly enhance your web presence.

Let’s start off by defining what are Google+  Local Pages?

Simply put they are location based search results in Google that contain directory style information about your business. Name, address, phone number, hours, details, AND some other great features that we’ll get into below.

Here’s five reasons why you should be paying attention to this:

Google+ Local Pages Create a separate listing in search results

Hang on, just as an aside: Did you know that 43% of Google searches are location based? Or that 1 in 3 searches on mobile devices have local intent?

What does that really mean? Essentially, your potential customers are typing general (“sandwiches in Fulham”) or specific (“Pret a Manger in Bath”) search queries into Google in hopes of finding what they are looking for, close to their current location, more often than not on a mobile device or tablet. If you have a local shop front, clearly you want to show up here.

As you've probably noticed from personal searches, Google loves to put location-based results at the top, because they deem them to be the most relevant to the person. Remember, Google rules the world internet. When Google tells you something is important to increase the chances of your success in organic search just do it - and they are really keen that you embrace the new Google+ Local Pages

Don’t forget this: Google+ Local Pages also integrate with Google Maps and show up as listings on the maps tab.

Google+ Local Pages Support the SoLoMoCo Revolution

The what revolution? I hear you ask. Social, Local, Mobile, Commerce. Put another way – it should form the backbone of your SEO – remember 43% of all Google searches are location based.

Understanding this SoLoMoCo revolution is going to become a must for online marketers of both B2B and B2C brands. Google+ Local Pages will be essential in your mastery of the “local” inside of “SoLoMoCo”. It will be the most important platform you can use to market your local business.

Google Plus Local Pages Integrate Social Recommendations

Google Places, as mentioned above, was a directory style informational listing of your local business. Google+ Local Pages take the listing a step further to integrate features that will increase awareness for your brand, on a personal level.

Let’s think this through a bit – if someone recommends your business, using the +1 feature, your business will then become a ‘relevant’ search result for anyone connected to them through Google+, i.e. their friends. The functionality works automatically in the background once the page is setup.

Why wouldn’t you want to let your customers rave about you, recommend you, and help their friends find you? Your current customers become your brand advocates.

Google+ Local Pages are Easy to Create and Manage

Google+ Local Pages will take you a maximum of 15 minutes to create.

Visit: https://plus.google.com/pages/create -> click on “Local”

Google Plus Local Pages are FREE

• How about the fact that Google+ Local Pages can do the following without investing any money
• market your business
• increase your rankings in organic search results (without paying an SEO expert)
• be an acceptable replacement for a website if you can’t afford one

Convinced?