Social Media SEO: How Social Media Can Benefit Your Business
When developing your social media strategies it’s important to consider the effects social media SEO has by asking yourself;
A strong social media presence is an important aspect for almost any business, especially if you rely on online customers for the majority of your income. But what you might not have considered is optimising your social media posts for SEO purposes.
In the modern day, social media platforms are becoming a key source of information, with many people browsing these sites for specific information rather than Google, Bing, or any other search engine. That’s where social media SEO comes in.
But what is social media SEO, how can your business utilise it, and what are the potential benefits? That’s what we’re here to tell you – read on!
What is social media SEO?
Simply put, social media SEO is the process of combining organic social media and search engine optimisation strategies to maximise the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. By including relevant and important information, keywords, and features in your social media posts, people searching those platforms are more likely to be exposed to your company.
There are several ways to optimise your social media SEO. For example, you will want to include captions, alt-text for images, and closed captions on videos to maximise visibility for people searching for specific information.
Additionally, each social platform will have its own key strategies to aim for when tailoring your content, such as different keywords and hashtags depending on search norms of each platform.
Do people really use social media to search for information?
The popularity of social media is almost incomprehensible. In 2021, TikTok overtook Google as the most visited website on the internet, and it is estimated that around 35% of Gen Z internet users (born 1996 – 2010) use TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter as their primary search engine.
There could be a number of reasons for this, but perhaps the most relevant is that many people will see local restaurants, breaking news, new trends, and more as they scroll through their feed. Then, if what they’ve seen intrigues them, they opt to search for more information within the app rather than taking the time to change to a web browser.
Plus, several social media apps have in-built functionalities to help with specific searches, such as LinkedIn with job applications, Instagram with local businesses, Facebook reviews, and more.
That means the answer is yes – a lot of people use social media as a search engine to find news stories, key information, data, and much more. That’s why it is crucial that you are optimising your social media posts to be found by users searching for information.
Understanding the importance of social media SEO
Realistically, social media SEO utilises the same principles as regular SEO. You aim to target specific search phrases or key information to help your business be seen by relevant people who are looking for the same thing. The only differences are the methods in which you go about optimising your page.
The first and most important point is to have a business page set up on all the relevant social media platforms to you. Different platforms tend to have different demographics, so you will need to ensure you are targeting the right audience.
Secondly, you will need to be creating unique, shareable, and engaging content to guarantee that it is seen by as many people as possible. Having the platform isn’t enough, you need a reason for people to visit it, and that comes entirely from what you post!
Create a variety of informational and useful content, from blog-like posts to videos and everything in between! The content you produce forms the backbone of your social media strategy, which can affect your business in a number of positive ways.
What benefits can social media SEO have on your business?
There are a number of reasons to start utilising social media SEO in your marketing strategy, especially if you’ve noticed that recent business hasn’t been as strong, or you aren’t regularly developing relevant leads.
1. INCREASING VISIBILITY AND DISCOVERABILITY
You want your business and its offering to be seen by the people who can benefit from it. If you offer B2B work, then you want to be seen by other businesses, if you make children’s clothing you want to be seen by parents, and so on.
A strong social media strategy will help you target the people you need to reach, be it through targeted adverts or keyword and hashtag targeting, to ensure that anyone who needs you can find you. Plus, this kind of promotion helps you reach new audiences and people who may not know about your business already, increasing brand awareness.
2. INCREASING SOCIAL PAGE GROWTH
Social media can often have a snowball effect, in the sense that the more followers and interactions you get, the quicker those figures will grow. That’s why it’s important to grow your page independently of targeting your audience.
When people interact with your posts, those interactions will appear on the feeds of other people who follow them, thus further expanding your reach. The larger your following, the more people interact with your posts, and the higher the number of eyes seeing your page!
3. INCREASING CONVERSIONS
By including inbound links to your website or shop from your social posts, you can help turn those leads into conversions. If the content you produce is interesting and helpful to the reader, they may be more inclined to follow any links in the post.
Demonstrating that you have detailed industry knowledge in your posts and directing users to your website will help you boost business and increase your income.
Work with social media SEO specialists
At EDGE Creative, our content writers work closely with the SEO team and our social media specialists to ensure that all our content achieves what it sets out to do. We have worked closely with businesses across the UK to develop and execute effective social media SEO strategies.
If you’d like to benefit from our expertise, get in touch with our team today – you can even benefit from a free brand audit (worth £750) from the experts at our digital marketing agency to help review your brand positioning and identity!
Call our office on 0121 355 8092 or email info@edge-creative.co.uk to find out exactly what we could do for you.
