SEO- The Basics

Before I took a class on social media I had absolutely no idea what SEO stood for.  In this class I learned that it meant Search Engine Optimization. After learning what SEO stood for, I was enticed into doing more research so I could know more than what the letters in SEO stood for.

According to searchengineland.com, it is the process of getting traffic from the “organic” listings on search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo. Where search engine optimization becomes crucial is in the business world.  The listings posted in search engines are ranked on relevance in accordance to what the user searched for. The game is to get your business in that first page of listings. Why? They will be more likely to click on your website and this potential customer can actually become a customer. They have a great clip posted on the website that gives more details on what SEO is. 

The site socialmediaexplorer.com takes on a unique approach when it comes to search engine optimization. The article I read states that if you obey two “pillars” of SEO, you will create more traffic going to your sites whether it may be business or personal. The ‘pillars’ they discuss are being active and adding value, they act in a cause and effect relationship. You need to regularly update your social media, that means everything from Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, to Google+. The same goes for your website, mostly your business website but if you have a personal website that works as well.

What I most enjoyed about this article is that they emphasized showing your ‘friends’ or ‘followers’ that you are ALIVE. This means sending a Tweet back to those who tweet you and replying to Facebook posts. This will open the doors allowing more people to go to your social media pages and join the conversation. The bigger the conversation the more value you add to the customer experience.

Managing Social Media... it takes time.

New social media platforms seem to be emerging from the shadows. Each one provides a unique and/or new functions to connect you with your family and friends, if you are like me you want to join each platform just to see if the new platform is as cool as other say it is. What you end up with is a headache.

So many platforms to check, too many passwords to remember; wouldn’t it be cool if a site existed that combined the news feeds of all these sites so all you have to do is sign onto one site and get caught up on everything more efficiently; they are called aggregators.

Mashable gives what it considers to be the top 5 aggregators. Whether you want an aggregator for personal use that is simple in design and user friendly, Tweetdeck is what you want; or if you are part of a firm that manages social media for multiple companies whom expect a high return on investment you want Spredfast.

If managing personal accounts isn’t hard enough, I can only imagine the amount of work it takes to manage social media for a business. According to Forbes, it takes a medium sized company it takes 32 hours a month to manage one social media platform; in my personal experience companies will often have at least two.

The article continues on by quoting the CEO of a firm that function to handle your company’s social media, “I advise all my clients on some basic principles.”

First, decide what you want to achieve. You can’t just join social media because someone says it’s crucial for conducting business. If your social media platform lacks purpose. Second, don’t spread yourself too thin. You won’t need more than three platforms, if you jump on every new platform that emerges you will lose focus. Third, keep some social media in house. It should be easy to find an employee who likes to spend the day on Facebook, use that to your advantage.

In summary, aggregators and other tools should be used in both your personal and professional life. 

Social Media as a Tool for Organizations... no brainer.

For my generation, using social media has become that of a no brainer. Nevertheless, some businesses and organizations have not jumped on this trend that seems to never end.

The Social Media Examiner wrote an article about 9 companies that are using social media and “doing it right.” First, Zappos makes you “like” their page before giving you access, this works because it says they want to be in a “like-like” relationship making it so that the customers are held to the same status as they are as a company. You can tell that Zappos really cares about building relationships with its customers.

Second, the Ford Company has a blog titled “The Ford Story.” What makes it so successful is when viewers first look at a post they can see the comments before they even start to read the blog post. The author of the article says, “this sets a welcoming and friendly first impression to new viewers.” In addition, these comments often include ideas for the next generation of Ford vehicles and Ford takes these ideas seriously and has often used customer ideas for the new Ford vehicles. 

In Riley Gibson's article on Mashable.com, he discusses the idea of organizations using social media as a tool for progress. He takes it a step further and discusses the mistakes organizations make when using social media or not using it to its full potential.

First, customers would love to give ideas and feedback to organizations but not unless they are prompted. We can see a great example with Ford Motor Company and its blog with comments at the top of each post instead of the bottom. Organizations can use social media as an asset to get immediate customer feedback; this allows the organization to fix any problem while it is still small before it grows into a huge deal.

Second, the posts made on some organization’s Facebook page are self-serving information. More often than not it is the marketing department making these posts and all they post is information about products and services that is offered. The problem with this is that it doesn’t spark a conversation with its customers, keeping the organization-to-customer relationship one sided. I guess you can call it the organizations relationship with it self.

Social Media is a no brainer. If your organization is not utilizing its capabilities you are missing out on a huge tool to make progress. 

This work by Ryan Archibald is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://ryanarch7.blogspot.com/2013/03/social-media-as-tool-for-organizations.html.