Social Media much more than just an SEO tool
Following up on my last post, I've been thinking about why brands are using social media and why it's the talking point around companies big and small as we come to the end of 2009. Without doubt, 2009 has been the year that social marketing and social media came of age and the primary reason for this is because it's where the audience is at.
Globally, Facebook now has over 300m members and in the UK alone, it's now attracting a quarter of the UK's online display advertising spend. Twitter is also growing- though it has a very long way to go to catch up with Facebook- and actually in the US this week, the first evidence came to light of its American audience plateauing. Facebook's phenomenal growth is coming from Asia and Europe and there are now local versions of Facebook for over 40 languages and growing!
All of this shows us why brands are clamouring to get involved and are trying to identify how they can capitalise on the social boom whether it's through the development of branded applications and fan pages, targeted advertising or through the creation of community tools to help connect and engage with their audiences. But another very big part of social media is the SEO value that all these activities can add. By creating fan pages, writing and distributing content- be it text, images or videos and encouraging user-generated activities, companies are creating link and search engine equity to help improve their search visibility and their rankings.
Google's algorithm rewards companies for regularly creating fresh and dynamic content and for creating links back into their website(s) and whilst this is yet another area to be ticked off to support SEO activity, this also means that some companies are only regarding social media as an SEO add-on. This is frustrating as although it definitely does support and aid SEO, it should be so much more than that.
Social media should be used to primarily listen and then where appropriate to engage or to connect with customers. It's a listening post and a platform for action. As long as ‘pub rules’ are considered as outlined in the post below then it can deliver immense value for companies whether it’s using it as an awareness building platform, a platform to connect, listen and react to customers, a platform to give customers access to content or products or a platform to bring to life a broader advertising or brand platform.







