A Note from Jerry
There are countless eBooks, WSOs, and launches that have occurred over the last five years that focus on social media and how social media can improve your rankings in Google. They are all bullshit. Social media has never been a strong signal for SEO and those that focused on it as an SEO component completely missed the boat on what social media is for.
It’s to engage people in conversations…get them talking and usually about something controversial to really get them talking. It isn’t enough to get likes on Facebook, subscribers to your feed or followers on Twitter, you have to engage those people. Otherwise, you are just wasting everyone’s time.
In terms of my belief system, everything that you do must have an end result in mind. I don’t believe in “busy work”, as the web is full of that and littered with thousands of failed business owners for that very reason. Every social media outlet takes time away from doing other marketing channels for your business, which is why I only recommend three: Facebook, Blogs, and Twitter. Everything else just doesn’t have the same return.
With Facebook, I post every new article that we list on our blog for more traction, but I use conversation starter headlines. For example, years ago there was a “billboard war” between Audi and BMW in Southern California. My post simply said, “How Not To Get Ambushed” and it led to a ton of clicks and conversation. And the key is that I was INVOLVED in those conversations, I didn’t just post and leave it up to an outsourcer to engage people, I did and it led to a richer conversation and even some sales.
The next effective measure is with your blog. I use the blog and Facebook together to drive the conversation, so they really aren’t separate for what I do. A lot of people focus on getting people subscribed to their feed. I would much rather have been engaged in Facebook and reference my blog posts. I have tested this over and over in every market I have been in and it is always more effective. The engagement with Facebook is just richer.
Twitter doesn’t allow for the same engagement or even conversation that Facebook or blogs offers, just because it is next to impossible to follow a conversation without doing some digging. Some people live and die with Twitter, I don’t see the point. I post blog posts and tips on Twitter. That’s it. I will follow competitors to spy on what they are posting as I can go through their feed a lot faster than I can with Facebook.
The time you spend on social media should be proportionate to the sales/revenue you are generating. When breaking news hits your market, you hit Twitter first, Facebook second, and then follow up with a blog post and repost on Twitter and Facebook. The reason I go in that order is the speed I can get the message out the quickest.
-Jerry
A Note from Michael
Trying to start a business on the back of social media sites is asking for it to fail. Use social media to build a loyal following and stay relevant, to answer customer service requests, to interact with your customers (data mining), to communicate with influencers, etc. Or use social media as a paid traffic testing tool.
It’s not impossible to build a small business on something like Facebook or Twitter if you really know what you are doing, but there are easier ways to get sales while building your social presence as you go along. Focus on the 10% of the work that will actually build a long term business. Social media is not in that 10% no matter how glamorous and sexy you think it is. Just because other companies are doing it doesn’t mean they are making money on it, or aren’t missing out elsewhere.
Building a Google+ author profile up to being in 5,000 circles will not give you a huge payday. It will not help you rank. It will do nothing but distract you from building the actual business.
Still Want To Focus On Social? Then think about this…
I worked for a social media agency in Nashville right out of college. I worked on some huge country artists’ social presence on Facebook, MySpace (when it mattered), Twitter, etc. I ghost-posted as them. I knew them inside out. I increased their followers 2x on Twitter, 10,000 a month on Facebook, and had accounts with higher interaction rates than the top ten artists on the Billboard charts. But none of that got a call from the record labels thanking me. What actually got a record label to call? Fixing a major band’s website SEO, getting them to rank for their name and all variations, tripling their website traffic overnight. Album and ticket sales jumped.
Keep this in mind before doing social media. Yes, you can start an agency for brands but there is far more money to be made in building a full marketing business that incorporates SEO, branding, and all the RCS we discuss here in SEO Revolution.