Social Media Marketing is a very effective tool that compliments SEO. Not only do social networks provide incredible amounts of exposure to people that may be interested in your products or services, they also provide backlinks and off site optimization elements that may help with rankings.
Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are used by hundreds of millions of people. The number of Facebook users is expected to surpass one billion people by the end of 2012. That is almost one-seventh of the world’s population using one website. Twitter, at the time of writing, has over 380 million registered users (however, many users may choose not to register, and just view public pages). These are substantial numbers that shouldn’t be ignored.
Perhaps the biggest benefit of getting your site into the social sphere is the big boost in SEO and ultimately authority that your site gains the more it’s talked about. Now more than ever search engines like Google and Yahoo are taking signals from the big social networking sites and rewarding those that have a fairly strong presence. Getting your site talked about on Facebook, Digg, Twitter, YouTube, and others lets search engines know that people find your site resourceful, or at least worth talking about.
Social networks can be tapped into by conducting a number of methods of Social Media Marketing. There are a number of services that sell targeted Facebook ‘likes’ as well as Twitter followers. Although these services may not be feasible for everyone, they provide an initial fanbase to companies that are new to social media.
Social media provides a number of things not previously available to business owners. Businesses can now interact with their clients directly, and on a mass scale. Whether it be collecting opinions or promoting a new deal, social media provides a level of instant communication between the customer and the vendor that would otherwise be very difficult. Of course, one cannot base their entire business around social media alone, but it is certainly a very large part of enhancing your visibility online.
In addition to Facebook and Twitter, a company may want to consider the benefits of using YouTube. Like Facebook and Twitter, YouTube is also free to use. It may require significantly more time, effort, and expenses to continually produce videos for YouTube, but this service provides an added layer of interaction with the customer that Facebook and Twitter have yet to implement directly, and with ease.
Ultimately, Social Media Marketing is something that should never be ignored. The potential for exposure and new clients is far too great, and the authority boost too valuable.
