There is no doubt that the birth of social media with the early days of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, have changed the way we do digital business. No longer do we have to wait for customers to contact us via pay-per-click or SEO campaigns but we can actually engage our customers direct and speak to them, promoting our services/products, solving their problems and influencing them to buy.

Social Media Improves Your SEO

But did you know that social media can have a direct effect on your SEO campaign and help increase your rankings? Whilst Google have advised the number of Retweets, Shares, Likes and followers are not part of their algorithm, when you make this part of your link building strategy it can be a great way of attracting the most authoritative and relevant links back to your website and eyes on your content.

Content Marketing

Welcome to content marketing. Content marketing is called non interruption marketing. It’s informing and engaging your clients with your content, encouraging them to buy. Whether this is in the form of helpful guides, articles, infographics, ebooks, giveways, interviews or podcasts, you can gain an audience hungry to engage, share or even better link back and mention your content. It’s the best way to become an authority in your niche and this is what Google wants. They want the highest ranked site to be the one which produces the best content, the most talked about and the most authoritative in its niche. No longer can you just build 300 links from various sites mentioning you most important keywords and expect this will be enough, you actually have to work and earn your place in the top spots of Google.

How does this work with social media? Via two ways, getting eyes on your content and outreach campaigns.

Getting Eyes On Your Content

Some people thinking just writing a couple of blog posts a month is enough to be doing “content marketing”. It isn’t. It’s a bit like hiring a speaker to speak to an empty room, no one hears your message. You need to be able to no.1) find people who like to read your content no.2) share the content with them no.3) encourage them to either share or subscribe to read more. You are going to need to build your followers whether this is organically by engaging with people or via sponsored posts which increase the reach of your content (vital for Facebook or you will find your message just reaching existing clients, family and friends).

Outreach

For link building purposes, social media is a valuable way to find the influencers in your niche and talk to them! For example, say you have put together a great piece of content and your looking to attract links and eyes back to it. Simply emailing influencers may not be enough and come across quite cold and your emails may be ignored. How about if you actually commented on their recent content, RT, liked or shared it, engaged with them on social media over a period of time and then approached them? They then hopefully know who you are, appreciate you actually like their content and more open to not only open your email but more responsive to any request you have to share, like or even better link back to your content via their own blog.