We've been talking about social media for what seems like ages now.
However, unless you've seen it grow from the ground up, it's not an
immediately clear concept – you and your clients may not be on the same
wavelength.
One concept that can still confuse the heck out of clients is social
media link building. So let's dig into why social media matters, which
networks/platforms have value and which don't, and methods of using
social for your own link efforts.
Why Does Social Media Matter?
One huge reason that social media matters right now is, simply,
because everyone likes it. Even if you detest some (or all) of the
platforms, using the big ones is almost mandatory at this point.
Everyone's on Facebook. Lots of people are on Twitter. Most people
are on LinkedIn. Some people are on Pinterest. And SEOs are on Google+.
Social media is all about relationship building, and the more recent
lines of thinking about link building involve (guess what?)
relationships. Just as you have to earn the trust of a friend, you have
to earn good links these days.
With trust being such a good thing, using trusted sites is a critical
way that you can show your community that you are legitimate. Many
things are easy to automate and fake, but doing social media well?
That's difficult.
Sites like Twitter and Facebook are seriously trusted sites, and a
profile link there is obviously going to be a good link, but the
interaction there is also a good source of trust for a brand. Tons of
spammy template sites are built in order to capture rankings and traffic
and send it elsewhere, for example, but the chances of those types of
sites having a Facebook page with 1,000 fans who actually comment and
interact is pretty slim.
Social matters because everyone uses it, basically, and because it's a
seriously efficient way of promoting your site, your brand, and your
personal voice. We used to comment on blog posts and in forums mainly,
but now we have all these other ways of expressing our opinions, bonding
with others, and promoting ourselves.
How to Build Links Socially
Promoting a site through social media can also help to build links.
A key point to remember here is that there are many ways to build links.
Social media links are difficult to measure much of the time. Many
links generated through social are indirect ones, being placed down the
road.
Sometimes you don't actually generate links. Sometimes you generate straight conversions, which is fantastic.
Sometimes all the social activity helps you rise in the SERPs,
hopefully leading to more links/clicks/conversions. The links that you
insert into your profiles can certainly help you, and you can build
links to those profiles to boost their visibility. Sounds almost like
magic doesn't it?
The Benefits of Social Links
The main benefit, as mentioned earlier, comes from the visibility
that social promotion gives your brand. Social signals are a factor in
Google's algorithm and can cause your results to appear higher in
searches at times.
Having great social sites encourages people to interact with your
brand and have it on their minds, thus (hopefully) encouraging more
conversions and links.
Popular social networks also give you a good link to your main site
from your profile, which carries the very real benefit of any great
link. If it's a followed link, it will help you rank higher, which is a
good direct SEO value.
Not all profile links are followed, and those that aren't are still
good for traffic, but if you can grab the followed ones? That's
fantastic for SEO purposes.
LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest profile links are followed for now. Twitter and Facebook profile links are nofollowed.
Don't ignore a site that's big just because you can't get a followed profile link though, as the benefits are still there.
The Major Social Networks
Facebook
Facebook has been around since early 2004 and has more than 1 billion active users.
We constantly fuss about privacy issues and being served ads on
Facebook yet we're still using it to show off our kids' latest photos,
tell everyone about our amazing vacation, inspire jealousy about how
awesome our lives are, spout off about politics and religion, and annoy
everyone with our game requests and group invitations.
Facebook has a lot of problems and a lot of intricate settings that
you need to pay attention to, but it has some fantastic benefits too,
most importantly (for marketing purposes) the Facebook Page. A brand can
post photos, videos, status updates, information about upcoming
events/sales, contests, etc. You can communicate with a brand and its
users on a Page, and some brands give you special information if you
"Like" them.
Just to give you an example of the potential of a big brand engaging its users, check the Starbucks stats below:
What about a small brand? My daughter takes ballet classes at a local
dance school that has 469 likes. That's a far cry from Starbucks but
for them, it's a nice amount. They can promote upcoming dance shows,
post photos in hopes of getting more parents to sign their kids up,
offer special rates for signing up before a certain date, give parents
information about rehearsals and extra practices, etc.
In their case, maybe they don't generate actual links to either their
Facebook page or their website, but they can generate signups. If the
goal of a link is to increase brand visibility and generate more
converting traffic, then anything else that functions in that same way
can easily be regarded as just as important as a link.
Last example: My agency runs a local news site and we've relied
heavily on Facebook to promote its articles. In fact, in all of 2012,
our number one referral was Facebook, sending us 8,321 visitors who
averaged over 3 pages per visit and over 3 minutes per visit. For a
small local site run totally through volunteers those numbers aren't bad
at all. That's great visibility for us and it's translated into
advertising requests, guest post inquiries, and new non-agency volunteer
staff.
And personally on your own account, you can always promote whatever
you like. I sometimes post my articles there but don't always because I
use the account for more personal than business reasons.
Some people have their Twitter and Facebook connected so whatever
they post on one gets posted on the other. Although I'm not a fan of
that usually, it certainly does provide efficiency.
Twitter
Twitter has been around since 2006 and currently has about 500 million users, half that of Facebook.
If I had to pick a favorite network, it would be Twitter. The 140
character limit fits my attention span and lets me scan loads more
information than I could get if I had to read 15 articles.
The ease of interaction on Twitter makes it a very accessible
network. You don't have to do any more than "tweet" something. There's
no pressure for video or photos, and there are a host of applications
that you can use to make Twitter work better for you. I use web Twitter
because I am a Luddite but for the serious social media power user,
you'd probably be better off exploring a proper Twitter application.
Where people fail the most on Twitter is in tweeting links only, or tweeting
only their own posts. No one wants to deal with a one-sided tweeter.
Some of the best promotional efforts on Twitter will come about
through influential people who follow you or see your tweets, and if
you've never interacted with them or anyone else, they may be less
likely to help you out.
Some people believe that you should respond to everyone who tweets to
you, no matter what, and there are those who disagree. I tend to side
with the "respond to everyone" group but I don't think you need to thank
every single one of the 500 people who retweets your article or says
"nice writeup" because that can get silly.
Brands being addressed should always respond, though, big or small.
If someone is complaining on Twitter, that's worth an extremely quick
response.
Just like other networks, Twitter can help you build links by getting
your content in front of people who may link to it. While Facebook sent
my news site the most referrals, Twitter tends to be the biggest social
referrer for both my agency site and most of the sites for which I have
Google Analytics access. With that being the case, I don't think most
people can afford to ignore the power of Twitter for getting people to
your site, hopefully leading to links and conversions.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn
was launched in 2003 and is considered to be a social network for
people who have a professional job or are looking for one. It currently
has
200 million users,
around a third of what Twitter shows. You can have a personal and/or a
business page so it's definitely a good profile to have, and if you're
job-hunting, in some industries it may be critical.
However, just because it's considered to be a professional networking
site doesn't mean that it's not full of spam. Chances are that if you
have more than a few connections, you'll be besieged by connection
requests from people that you have never met.
That being said, for professional purposes like networking and
keeping up with industry news, it's quite nice. You can see content
pushed by people in your network and it tends to be more
industry-relevant than what's promoted on Facebook certainly, and
Twitter occasionally.
People don't tend to use LinkedIn to argue about the latest election
or show photos of their latest latte. If you have a relevant
professional piece of content to share, this is a great place to do it
that should get you some nice visibility.
Interesting note: LinkedIn sends my site zero traffic. However, my
profile gets plenty of visibility and I don't promote articles here, but
considering I'm advising you to do so, I should probably start, right?
Google+
Google+
came out in 2011 and, like most Google offerings, was (and still is)
disliked and ignored by a lot of anti-Google types. This network uses
circles that you can create and share content with, and you can create
lots of different circles to share certain types of content so if you
want something that can be promoted in a tailor-made way, this is a
great option.
Google+ is also tied to Google Authorship which is becoming a more
important factor in search results for Google. If you aren't signed up
and you write any content anywhere, you should get on the ball and get
yourself an account here.
From what I can tell, most of the people in my contact list who use
G+ are other SEOs. Obviously any success will depend on the demographic
of the network because if you're writing about organic gardening and no
one in your circles gives a flip about organic gardening, your content
probably won't get shared as much and it won't draw conversions.
Basically, though, Google+ works like the others: you promote content
and others can share it, like it (by +1'ing it), or comment on it. It
may not be as important as the other networks just yet, but it seems to
be getting there.
Pinterest
Pinterest
is personally the network that I like the least although I'm not a big
fan of images or video anyway, as I'd rather read words. It's
huge with many people though.
Launched in beta in 2010, it became seriously popular in 2011 and
suddenly everyone was on Pinterest, whether they actively used it or
not. The last number of users I can find referenced is 40 million.
From my perspective, lots of people in my Facebook friends group who
were not present on Twitter or Google+ were on Pinterest when I joined.
For certain industries it's probably the best way to market, but for
others, not so great.
Like other networks, Pinterest is plagued by spam and fake accounts,
but after the links from pins were nofollowed things calmed down a bit.
Pinterest does not send any decent traffic to any of the sites that I
have Google Anaytics access to unfortunately, even though a few of those
sites do have accounts.
"
Why Your SEO & Social Strategy Should Include Pinterest" points out the awesome benefit of
any
good network: "Does Google like fresh content from social sharing?
Yes." The author goes on to list examples of brands doing well on
Pinterest so if you're interested in how to do it right, definitely
check those out.
Other Social Networks To Pursue
Foursquare
Foursquare is useful for many businesses, especially if they can
attract customers through discount codes or anything else related to
checkins. Bruegger's Bagels has used Foursquare to give customers a free
bagel on every 5th checkin. That's pretty awesome stuff to inspire
loyalty.
Foursquare can be an awesome
asset for local search
as well. Recently people have started predicted that this network will
be dead by the year's end, but I thought that it would be years ago and
it's kept going strong.
Instagram
Instagram is insanely popular with many people (not me…yet) and again, depending upon your niche, it can be a
great marketing tool. Considering
the new apps that are being developed to help you analyze your results
there, it's probably not going away anytime soon. As with Pinterest,
visuals are amazing marketing tools for certain niches.
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon can be fantastic for sending traffic, and if your site
happens to resonate with the stumblers who find it, you definitely have a
good chance of conversions and links, just like you do with anything
else.
MySpace
MySpace seems to still hold value for certain niches, like new music
for example. In my opinion though, I wouldn't create a MySpace profile
for a professional business unless your target market is teenagers who
talk a lot.
Refernce:-http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2237733/Social-Media-Link-Building
Ebriks Infotech :-
SEO Company
t’s
time to take a trip down memory lane to look at the winning and losing
moments in online and search marketing in 2012. Everyone loves the
thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, so here are a few memorable
highlights from search, social, and online tech.
Facebook’s
IPO in May was described as one of the worst in the last 10 years. The
highly anticipated IPO was impacted by technical glitches that delayed
trading and investors lost money as a result. The stock has lost more
than a quarter of its value in the following weeks.