Social Media, although mainly free to use, can be seen as a huge drain on resources and time for many businesses.image of a businessman taking steps through a maze of using Social Media for business

It can be viewed as another to add to the `To Do List` but just a few small steps can make a huge difference to…

  • traffic coming to your website
  • possible sales leads
  • your search ranking in the major search engines

Just a little bit of work to your Social Media framework can help build the solid foundations for your Social Media marketing strategy.

Before you start to throw yourself in to using Social Media on a regular basis you need to have those foundations in place. These come in the form of your profiles and having them optimised for the search engines with links pointing back to your web pages, including your Blog.

Since the recent Google Hummingbird update Social Media now plays a vital role in how your web pages are ranked within the major search engine. Just by having your profiles set up and optimised will make a huge difference even without daily use and engagement on your Social Media platforms, obviously regular and consistent use and engagement will help back this up, but for the benefit of helping you save time and focus on running your business, we are going to take a quick look at how setting up your profiles can make a big difference.

Obviously each platform is different but in general you need to look at each profile and try to add as much information, including your main keywords naturally within the descriptions, and links back to relevant web pages.

image of a Facebook like iconFor example…Facebook allows separate sections where you can add a description and just by typing in a URL you can add a live link to web pages within the text.

You are restricted with Twitter to a sort Bio but make sure this is filled out with your primary keyword included in the Bio. Make sure the web link option is filled out with a link to your Home page or Blog.image of the Twitter bird

LinkedIn allows various sections where you can add descriptions where you can include keywords within that description. You can also add 3 links back to websites, Blogs, etc

GooglePlus allows far more links and this is the one to concentrate on to increase your search ranking. Because Google Plus allows links back to your other Social Media platforms this is proof, in my opinion, that Google are looking at your social footprint to help rank web pages these days. Why else would they allow links back to their competitors?

With Pinterest you have a short Bio, much the same as Twitter, that you need to fill out again adding your primary keyword and a link to your website. There is a description section on YouTube that you can once again fill out by adding a descriptive paragraph/s about you or your business that includes your keywords again.

Just by taking these few steps will help enormously. Once completed you do not really need to do anything else to these profiles other than going back in a few months to check that your content is up to date and that all the links still work and are relevant.

Obviously the more you put in to Social Media, just as in life in general, the more you will get out of it but this is a great way of doing a few small basic steps to help you gain many benefits.

I hope you find this useful and these few steps will have major benefits for your business if set up correctly.

Best Wishes

Martin