The advent of Instagram and social media platforms has given businesses new ways to market and communicate.  Seo and social media marketing through outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Tumblr, Vine (RIP), and Instagram allow businesses to explore creative ways of finding new customers. They can engage with current customers, new ones, and retaining current ones.

Instagram-social-media-marketing

 

It is hard to determine which are the best social media sites for seo. Each business has different target markets and methods of doing their seo on social media.

Community manager became a new position when companies realized the value in interacting with potential and current customers on social media platforms.

As of April 2017, Instagram had over 700 million users worldwide.  This makes Instagram one of the largest social networks out there. One in which interacting with other people is a key element.  While managing The CowShare Organic Beef Company, I realized that Instagram was the company’s primary source of income.  Similar to performing an organic search using Google, Instagram has hashtags.  You must upload a good image, the right message, and the appropriate hashtags. This will land more followers to your account.

Interacting with clients through direct message and via the comment sections generated more success.  Being a social media influencer in the beef industry brought the company around 50 or more followers per day. This factor directly impacted and was reflected in our revenue. Another way to optimize social media is to follow people that are relevant to a particular industry.  Liking other people’s images will at one point get their attention and will potentially produce a follow back or a sell.

Instagram

 

Instagram Partnerships with other businesses that generate a lot of momentum and traffic is a wise strategy. The CowShare partnered with other beef companies in the country.

Instagram-social-media-marketing

How can social media help our business grow

Local influencers, grillers, restaurants and more.  As part of the deal other companies would advertise The CowShare on their Instagram page, an example of social media advertising. The Cowshare also organized raffles and different types of contests.  The keywords used in the hashtag were very important because that can always drive new traffic to a site.

Each Bio on Instagram should also contain a backlink to the account’s main site. It should also contain keywords that represent a company’s branding strategy.

A social media strategy on Instagram should always include the most popular list of words in that industry. It also should include the most popular words in the platform that day.

Many people ask “why is social media good?” One reason is that the account holder can get near-instant feedback from other people.  This gives a business a better chance to communicate directly with the customer.  This is why many brands are relying more on social media than on their own websites. 

Facebook

Facebook is another great way to promote and engage with customers.  Companies that have a Facebook Page should use it to leverage the capacity and reach of this platform.  The site itself has its own search engine that is being used more and more.  Seo for Facebook business page will drive traffic in the platform.  This company gives a business the ability to do customer service, to sell, and to redirect people to the business’ website.

Facebook ads marketing is another option to utilize keywords and redirects to your own site.  Back in 2010, a friend of mine and fellow BYU Idaho graduate wanted to work for the OECD organization in Paris.  For regular Joes like he and I it would be impossible to get a job at such an elite organization. My initial thought was the Adidas slogan “Impossible is Nothing.”

I created a Facebook ad that targeted employees of that organization. The ad linked directly into a Blogspot site that had my friend’s resume.  Little by little this Facebook marketing plan began to work.  Not only were people in France seeing the Blogspot site. Also visitors from the specific Paris neighborhood where the organization was located came and stayed in it over 30 seconds.  A month and $50 later, my friend got an email requesting an interview.  Facebook as a marketing tool and as an innovative way to land a job actually worked.

YouTube

This platform will also generate high quality leads. YouTube video SEO best practices include using a name of the video that will also attract Google searches.  An account has the possibility to promote products from their own YouTube page. They also have the opportunity to work with influencers who can promote the businesses. To track ROI and other ratios, an account holder can create a coupon code for those who watch a video or for the influencers.

Another best practice is creating a YouTube thumbnail image. This thumbnail image can be designed as clickbait. It is important to make it attractive and clear. In this way when the image appears either in YouTube or in Google, people will want to click on it.  The video description boxes can be utilized to embed product links. This links will direct to a target website, and tags can be added when uploading a video.

Use Keyword Planner to choose keywords for your titles. Google and YouTube will index those keywords. Then they will drive traffic if the words are relevant enough to what is being searched for.

Twitter

Twitter is more of an instant platform.  Though Google is not indexing tweets,  Bing is actually indexing twitter, so Bing is a great space in which to build SEO.  For a Twitter user to become more relevant, a best practices is to create good, sharable content.  Engage the target audience and create calls to action.  Always use links from your website so people can navigate to it.  Use hashtags and “Like” other people’s tweets.  Retweets should add something to the original tweet.  You can also do search by specific words and you can interact with those people. The key is to build a good reputation and followers.  A good bio in your twitter profile with the right keywords can make you come up on a search in Bing.  A good profile picture and cover image and go a long way in this platform.