For most businesses the benefits of using social media like twitter, facebook or a blog are very real. These platforms and can yield positive results for not only SERPS (Search Engine Results Page) rankings but for customer engagement and satisfaction as well. The key to using social media in a beneficial way for your business is simply that: using it.
For your business to effectively use Twitter and facebook you must be actively engaging with customers who reach out to you using these platforms. Setting it and forgetting it is a big mistake many company’s make. In fact if you plan to do that you are probably better off not venturing into the social media realm at all. Forgotten facebook pages can fill with spam, steal SERPS ranking (thus visitors). While Forgotten blogs and twitter accounts will not necessarily fill with spam they can steal SERPS and prove to be a hurdle between you in your customers.
On the other side of the spectrum properly using social media platforms can greatly improve your image and customer relationships. They can actively drive traffic to your site and significantly increase the number of loyal returning visitors.
How do you use social media platforms like facebook, twitter or a blog? The short answer is once a day for at least for 15 minutes. Really, that’s all it takes! Of course, the longer you spend the better but 15 minutes is a great start. Respond to questions, post/tweet company news, share interesting industry related articles, share related online pictures and video and more. The key is to do it on a regular basis.
So remember, if your thinking of using social media to drive traffic to your site, increase your customer interaction or satisfaction be sure to be an active user. Doing otherwise will do more harm than good.
Before jumping on the “social media bandwagon”, business owners should ask themselves which platform their potential clients are most likely to use: for B2B businesses the likes of LinkedIn and Twitter might be a good place to start spending the 15 minutes per day.
For B2C, Facebook might be more appropriate, especially in the case of our clients (hairdressers). Anyway you are right, 15 minutes per day is enough to get the ball rolling and finding out if 1. you are cut out for it ; 2. it works with your target audience.
Good post Thomas!
I’m currently using Twitter & Facebook to get targeted traffic to my site!
And its been working wonders! I already have 480 followers on Twitter & 130 fans on FB in under 2 months!
I committed myself to always having a daily conversation with at least 4 of my followers/fans. And I’m really enjoying it 🙂
I know facebook and twitter are very important and create a lot of traffic but it’s hard for me to keep sending invites to my freinds…
I feel like a spammer 🙁 And my clients don’t really reveal their facebook as most of them use it for personal uses. And as I know, facebook don’t give backlink’s. So maybe it’s my fault, but I don’t use facebook very often to promote my business.
Danny you don’t actually need to keep sending invite , just post few news and stuff you want related to your work and site , people who are interested in the topic will start following you , it’s a process which will take some times 😉
And Facebook do gives back-links , create a page on facebook and people become fan of you , you’ll have a link back on first page and you can have other links in comments and replies on your page.
I think you are right, If we aim to use social media as a traffic generator for your site, then we need to be very active in the social media sites, only then it is going to work
These days, social media is a good thing to promote your site and this will drive a huge traffic to your site. You just need an update profile to continually promote your products and make it popular on other social media sites.
Your facebook shouldn’t be used to add business friends to your profile. Instead, start a fan page or a business page and use that to post updates, article excerpts, and deals or contests to drive traffic to your site.
Social Media are in this time. The more you socialize with others, the more they will know more about your business and products and the bigger tendency that you will have a visitors that will eventually purchase something from your company.
The best social media to use today are Twitter & Facebook. If you want your product or your company to be more popular online, then better create a facebook and Twitter account for your business and maintain it. Add more friends and invite more target people that you know have a great possibility to be your future clients or customer.
You can not deny social media any more as an seo professional. Google and some other search engines are using social media to rank their serps because they understand that when people link from a social media account that it is probably high quality content, and of course the more people that link the better the content.
I’m just now starting to implement a lot more twitter and facebook strategies to get more traffic to my blogs. It’s nice to be more social anyways, and customers love that.