How Social Media has Changed SEO

Social media websites have spread like wildfire over the past couple of years. Today, so many people spend more time on Facebook, Twitter or some other social network than any other website.

Aside from connecting people, social networks also provide advertising opportunities. Take Facebook, for example. What do you do when you come across a website with half a billion active users? Develop Facebook Web promotion strategies and use the website as a marketing tool, of course.

It's not surprising to find so many businesses utilizing Facebook Web promotion these days.

In fact, lots of businesses have an FB page as their second homepage. So, the challenge here is how to use social media SEO to your business' advantage.

Social Media SEO

It's not so hard to advertise via Facebook Web promotion. FB and other social networks allow you to post ads, updates, pictures and videos in a snap. When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), on the other hand, there is some doubt whether Facebook SEO is really effective. For one, this particular social media site uses the “nofollow” tag. This means that your backlinks from Facebook aren't given any value by search engine crawlers. Thus, those links aren't affecting your search engine rankings at all (but they will still give you traffic).

Facebook links may be nofollow, but this doesn't mean that the website completely doesn't have social media SEO opportunities. Here are a Facebook SEO tactics:

• Post links to your website in less obtrusive areas. A good thing about Facebook Web promotion is that it presents ads and links in a rather subtle way. If you can notice, most of the ads on FB are at the right side. Although links can be found everywhere, they aren't slammed right in your face. By posting links only in your bio box, info tab, right side panel etc., you won't be turning off users by spammy messages. Thus, there are more chances of people checking out content in your site and linking to it.
• Don't stop the posting. Many a time have companies felt excited about reaching fans via Facebook Web promotion, but find that the excitement dwindles after a month or two. Keep on posting --- send out daily posts, and write about interesting things regarding your business, services, and products. These posts can encourage conversation, likes, and comments. Besides, if all your status messages are all about your products and services, your page will lean more on spammy.
• Give away free stuff. Almost everyone loves free stuff. Start a contest or coupon codes with enticing value to encourage fans to participate in your social media SEO campaign. If you get fans excited, they just might tell their family or friends and blog about it. This Facebook Web promotion tactic can result to more links pointing to your main site.
• Don't hesitate to ask for a link. It never hurts to request, or even beg, for a link. Once you have a minimum of 25 fans, post an update and ask your fans to post a link pointing to your site on their blog. If they're truly your fans, chances are they'll help you out with this Facebook SEO strategy. To increase the chances of getting that link, give out coupon codes or other free items.

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7 Ways Social Media Will Change Your Business Forever

Social media is one of the most powerful new marketing tools for business. In fact it is safe to say that if your business is not taken advantage of social media, then your business may get left behind in the dust. The proliferation of social media into our daily lives has exploded in 2009. Every day reveals a new form of social media from our phones to new social networks appearing on the Internet.

Some may argue social media today is chaotic with so many apps, widgets, countless features, and tools all fighting for a piece of the social media pie. However, like almost everything in business, there are key fundamentals that you’d need to address to give yourself a competitive edge in business.

The truth is the social media is continuously evolving. While many others try to keep up with these ever-changing factors, the savvy business owner should be creating a powerful social media presence that covers the essential areas of social media and creates a solid foundation for future growth.

1. It’s All About The People And Communications: Social media is just that, social. Just as social media is creeping into business it is a much more rapid accepted by your target market that is continuously bombarded by this new media. As such, you need to make sure you have a solid presence on such social media platforms as Facebook and Twitter. Ideally, these starting networks will provide time to adjust and grow your social media exposure and provide a solid starting point to grow from. Social media is about connection and communication. The true globalization and amalgamation of social media behavior has opened up a large door of opportunity for businesses that are forward thinking enough to take advantage of the situation.
2. The Perception Of Value And Trust: One of the key advantages of social media is that it breaks down the barriers that separate business from customer While many businesses hide behind this war as some sort of protection. Smart entrepreneurs take down that war and allow the target market to see behind the value. By doing so they create a warm rapport and build trust with their target market. Essentially, they are putting on a human face to their company and by developing closer connections to their customer base, they can increase sales and ultimately grow their profits using this medium.
3. Connectivity, Convergence and Productivity: One of the major problems for businesses starting to social media is the fact that everything is so disconnected. For example, if you release a new article or blog post, it can take a while to manually post these two-faced book, twitter, or wherever else you are aggregating your information to. Thankfully, there are many ways to integrate and connect all the social media services into one funnel. Using services like Ping.fm you can post to one service, which then feeds your post to your many other social networks. Ping.fm for example supports over 40 different social media platforms. Believe me, this can be a major timesaver and can still help you get your message out to every single social network you may be involved with.
4. The True Application Of Social Media: If you know anything about Facebook, you will know that Facebook apps are one of the primary ways that Facebook uses interact and get hooked on using the service. If you have a Facebook presence for your business, one area of social media you should consider is getting your own application built. You don’t have to have any programming or technical knowledge, as you can outsource this very easily. However, this can take some out of pocket startup capital to get going, but once it does it’s incredibly viral and powerful marketing tool for your business. Ideally, think of something to related to your business or target market that is fun and entertaining. Creating these apps is actually very simple to do and for some larger businesses that have taken this route, it has been incredibly lucrative.
5. Creating a True Network and Community: As mentioned earlier, some business is high time the wall that separates the business from the customers. This wall really does create a barrier to communication and customer involvement as well as loyalty to your business. By taking advantage of social media and creating an actual network between all of the social networks that you are involved with, you can actually create a viral community that actually helps to promote your business. So make sure that in each social network you promote your other networks and openly invite your customers to join the other networks to stay informed.
6. The Evolution Of Social Media Advertising: One thing you’ll find in social media is a lot of people advertising incorrectly. Twitter at is a great example of this. I see too many people sending out nothing but links trying to sell their products or services. However, any marketing expert will tell you that this is business suicide. In social media, direct advertising is often frowned upon because of the nature of social behavior. The savvy social media enhanced business owner will quickly realize that the soft sell approach works infinitely better than trying to communicate a powerful sales message in only 140 characters. By building a reputation of value and trust, as well as creating a solid rapport with your target market, you’ll have a much greater chance to convert the website visitors you will generate for your social media activities into an actual paying customers. That is not to say that cannot to use “Hooks” to draw interest into your promotions, that is just common sense. However, blatant hard sells will ultimately tarnish your reputation and damage any long-term prospects.
7. Making Money – The Main Reason For Your Social Media Presence: For most people, social media is about being social and connecting with other like-minded people. For a business, our goal is to make money. It is our sole reason for existing. Often times it is hard for a business to break the social media bubble and resistance to business efforts. Unfortunately, among many social media purists, there is a common perception that all business should be banned from social media.

Of course, that is not only unrealistic but impractical. However, by taking the correct approach to social media by being personable and putting a human face on your business you have a much greater chance of creating a solid and profitable traffic and revenue stream in the long-term. Most businesses do this by branding the person rather than the business. For example, a lot of top CEOs and executives of companies are the “front man” for their businesses in terms of social media.

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How Social Media has Changed SEO

Social media websites have spread like wildfire over the past couple of years. Today, so many people spend more time on Facebook, Twitter or some other social network than any other website.

Aside from connecting people, social networks also provide advertising opportunities. Take Facebook, for example. What do you do when you come across a website with half a billion active users? Develop Facebook Web promotion strategies and use the website as a marketing tool, of course.

It's not surprising to find so many businesses utilizing Facebook Web promotion these days.

In fact, lots of businesses have an FB page as their second homepage. So, the challenge here is how to use social media SEO to your business' advantage.

Social Media SEO

It's not so hard to advertise via Facebook Web promotion. FB and other social networks allow you to post ads, updates, pictures and videos in a snap. When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), on the other hand, there is some doubt whether Facebook SEO is really effective. For one, this particular social media site uses the “nofollow” tag. This means that your backlinks from Facebook aren't given any value by search engine crawlers. Thus, those links aren't affecting your search engine rankings at all (but they will still give you traffic).

Facebook links may be nofollow, but this doesn't mean that the website completely doesn't have social media SEO opportunities. Here are a Facebook SEO tactics:

• Post links to your website in less obtrusive areas. A good thing about Facebook Web promotion is that it presents ads and links in a rather subtle way. If you can notice, most of the ads on FB are at the right side. Although links can be found everywhere, they aren't slammed right in your face. By posting links only in your bio box, info tab, right side panel etc., you won't be turning off users by spammy messages. Thus, there are more chances of people checking out content in your site and linking to it.
• Don't stop the posting. Many a time have companies felt excited about reaching fans via Facebook Web promotion, but find that the excitement dwindles after a month or two. Keep on posting --- send out daily posts, and write about interesting things regarding your business, services, and products. These posts can encourage conversation, likes, and comments. Besides, if all your status messages are all about your products and services, your page will lean more on spammy.
• Give away free stuff. Almost everyone loves free stuff. Start a contest or coupon codes with enticing value to encourage fans to participate in your social media SEO campaign. If you get fans excited, they just might tell their family or friends and blog about it. This Facebook Web promotion tactic can result to more links pointing to your main site.
• Don't hesitate to ask for a link. It never hurts to request, or even beg, for a link. Once you have a minimum of 25 fans, post an update and ask your fans to post a link pointing to your site on their blog. If they're truly your fans, chances are they'll help you out with this Facebook SEO strategy. To increase the chances of getting that link, give out coupon codes or other free items.

@Addme

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