September 28th, 2009

SEO & Social Media Marketing Strategies

SEO 600 x 300

With a good strategy behind it social media marketing is extremely effective at targeting consumers and engaging them in a conversation not just about but with the brand. When used in combination with search engine optimisation (SEO) it can yield even better results. Social media marketing is being used by those in the SEO industry, because social media has a huge direct impact on search engine results, as search engines like Google tend to place preference on user generated content. What people need to understand is that SEO and Social Media need to go hand in hand as they operate as a symbiotic relationship – it’s difficult to do a successful SEO campaign without taking social media into consideration and vice versa.

The fact is that search engine optimisation is based on relevance and authority. Relevance is made if the content on your website has the right keywords and concepts. Blogs, communities, and different kind of discussions is a great way to add relevant content to your site. Authority comes from links, and it’s almost impossible to have a successful link campaign without engaging in blogs and sites like Stumbleupon and Digg. So as you see, implementing a social media marketing campaign without social content that can be (and will be) searched by your audience is a big blunder.

There are five steps you can follow to create an effective social media and SEO marketing campaign:

  1. Analysis of the target audience: Understand your target audience’s behaviour, preferencesm and methods of publishing and sharing. You can also track your audience by using social media monitoring tools (we like BuzzNumbers) that indentifies discussions, keywords and influencers related to your company, product, brand, or campaign.
  2. Set up goals: Define the goals of your marketing campaign. e.g. if you’re running an e-Commerce store, how much do you plan to increase your web sales with help of the SEO?
  3. Create a strategy: Create a strategy for reaching your goals with a combined social media and SEO marketing campaign. The strategy should focus on content and interaction, since it’s the content that the people are searching for. A keyword focused strategy means that you publish new content or are creating opportunities for user-generated content.
  4. Provide links: Do a research and explore where your target audience spends their time interacting with each other and sharing content. Then promote links and keywords on the sites so the audience can reach your content.
  5. Measure your results: See if your campaign is successful by measuring your goals. There are special measure tools that marketers can use to see the results of their social web content and SEO efforts. Google Analytics is free and reliable.

By adding SEO in a social media marketing campaign and vice versa, marketers, public relations professionals, and advertisers can extend the value of their assets. Well optimised social media content marketing campaigns can draw new audiences through search. Companies who can understand how to combine social media strategies with SEO will have a great advantage towards their competitors.

Social Media