In this day and age, one of the biggest and most effective marketing strategies for any business is using one of the widely used platforms in marketing a product or service is social media. I am pretty sure everyone knows about the social media platforms that are frequently used by anyone in this digital age are; Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram just to name a few.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is another strategy to drive traffic to your business’s website and by improving your keyword search engine rankings. Here are a few most commonly used search engine platforms such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.
Now, these two marketing venues used to be separated however it has now come to the attention of most marketers that there is a new approach to digital marketing. The Integration of both Social media and SEO can maximize your online reach. A study has shown that 50% of companies using only SEO as their marketing strategy and not integrating it with social media are struggling. And 38% of the companies that have integrated both SEO and social media have been quite successful in their campaign compared to the 2% that aren’t succeeding in using SEO alone.
These are three factors that you should be aware of to make this work for your business.
Quality Content
Content for your website, blog, or social media is the bloodline of what your customers will perceive you to be, it determines the products or services that they are looking for and how they would interact or if your customers will take action to purchase from you. The content of your website helps you in creating a loyal customer base. How frequently should you update your content? This would depend on what you have to offer as well. However, when coming up with quality content for your business, “Originality” counts the most. Always make sure that the content that was written has viable proof of accuracy. Be creative when it comes to the headlines especially in social media, the more eye-catching or if it sparks an interest the better it becomes, this would get noticed by your customers and potential customers. This in itself is one of the factors that would create an opportunity for you to get a sale.
Branding
Another important factor that you need to make sure you do it right with this kind of integration is branding. Be careful in using this in social media most often than not people tend to abuse it using the push method which highly irritates most followers or readers. This, in turn, makes them shy away from you. The best way to use this is to make it interactive; it makes this a more engaging to your customers. You can create surveys, blogs, thought-provoking and stimulating discussions, host webinars and answer blogs too, among your followers. This enhances your relationship with them and opens yourselves to potential customers and followers having a more personalized touch to their concerns and make it more likable which will help create brand loyalty.
Social Presence
To maintain your social presence one must always be consistent in posting and engaging with their customer base and potential ones. Always make sure you interact with them as frequently as possible.
How do you do this? Always plan on what your goals and objectives are in every campaign you do without a plan you will be doomed to fail, build a relationship with your customer base make this personal, be human, and help them instead of selling them the product. These are just a few of the factors you need to consider to maintain your social presence.
Website
Your website is the gateway for your customers or potential customers to learn more about your product or services. You need to make sure that everything that is in it is up to date. Like your business it evolves into something that is much better than when you have initially started with, so does the content of your site especially when your business has considerably grown, your site should as well. Always make sure you’re up to date with how current sites look these days or if you have a customized site, make sure it still looks as dynamic as the business you have right at this moment. And that is only speaking of the visible part of your site. What about the backend of your site, is navigating it easy or does it flow correctly, if it doesn’t then there might be broken links at the backend of your site that you need to have it fixed. Always make sure your website works well, check it out from time to time, and don’t wait for someone else to tell you there is something wrong with it. Your website needs to be maintained on a regular basis, having a well-maintained website shows professionalism for your company. If it doesn’t, then it is time to consider approaching a professional that can help you, check out Search Beast SEO.
Keyword Search
In every SEO campaign getting the right keywords helps in driving traffic to your website, however, when it comes to social media it’s a different story. There are 2 ways of finding out which keywords would work; one is to listen in to the online community you currently have then you can see which are frequently used by your customers and second is to try to incorporate a keyword in your campaign as you tweet, or post it on Facebook to see how the customers respond to it. When you get enough data you need to check in with any search engine if these are coming up on Google, you can also check your keywords using these Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and Moz seo tools. You also need to create content based on these words. This is part of the integration of your online campaign to be able to work well for you.
Integrating both Social Media and SEO is not as difficult as it seems, you just need to learn to adapt to the changes that are currently happening in digital marketing and to keep abreast with how people communicate, socialize, discover and purchase, and this might save your business.
Thanks for the article. Yes, a good digital marketing strategy including both SEO and Social Media is essential to tapping in on other major areas of traffic, however, I believe the Social Media piece requires a level of creativity, authentication, and transparency to be really successful. Social Media is far more effort.