How Can I Leverage Social Media for SEO Marketing?

Utilizing Social Media for SEO Marketing

Social media and SEO are often viewed as completely separate entities when it comes to online marketing.While your social media posts may appear in Google searches, those social search engine results pages don’t always give you the results you want. By using social media for SEO, you can drive the conversion of leads and prospects into long-term customers and take advantage of prospects who are actively searching for your social media platforms. 

The main difference between social media and SEO is that SEO is particularly helpful and the most effective when customers are in an active search mode– meaning they are diligently looking for something to fulfill an unmet need. On the other hand, social media posts occur more incidentally and will appear as customers are browsing social platforms on a day to day basis.

Here’s a comparison of what this means:

If I’m actively looking for a plumber near me, I’ll hop on Google, search for nearby businesses, check out their Google My Business profiles, read customer reviews, and make a choice based on how satisfied customers were with the service they received. In this case, SEO is the most effective form of marketing.

If I’m scrolling through my Twitter or Facebook feed, and I come across an advertisement for plumbing services, I would most likely scroll by it and forget about it soon after, even if I actively follow that company’s social page.  In this case, the company’s social media page helps build brand awareness.

Though it may seem like they’re complete opposites of one another, SEO and social media can actually be used in conjunction to maximize their effectiveness and benefit both forms of marketing. By leveraging social media for SEO, here are 5 ways that SEO marketers and social media community managers can combine forces and improve their respective practices!

1. Utilize the research and insights from one platform to another

Although people may have different intentions when in search mode versus social media browsing mode, you can still apply the insight you gain from your users on one platform and use it to create interesting content and call-to-action on another when strategizing social media for SEO purposes.

For instance, you can use your website’s organic search queries from Google’s Search Console to learn what problems people are hoping to solve when they search for your business or keywords relating to it. You can then use these insights to create social media advertisements and content that speaks to those same search queries. An example of this in action is explained below:

If you own a local restaurant and find that many people who visit your site on Google were searching for ‘make birthday dinner reservations’, you have the opportunity to create a Facebook advertisement with images of your featured menu items or party rooms that link to a website page to make reservations.

This method allows you to gather insight from one platform and leverages it for application across your other social platforms, which is powerful when combining social media for SEO.

2. Repurpose content across platforms

Think about the ways that you can share your content across all your social platforms when you create it for your Web properties. For example, if you create video content for YouTube, edit out the best 15-30 seconds as a preview for your Instagram feed. You can even create a call to action for your audience and provide click-through links where they can view the full video on your website.

Remember that it is very important to customize the content for each platform. Social media is designed for fast consumption and very few people will sit down and watch videos on Facebook for more than 10 minutes, while they would on YouTube. With that being said, ensure that you film, edit, animate, and create call-to-action based on where the user is coming from to maximize the viewership and content creation across all your platforms.

3. Use social media influencers to create content

The use of social media influencers have created waves in the world of marketing. They can be highly effective in sharing messages with their following in an authentic way while also creating unique, original content. Use Twitter or Instagram and scan user feeds in order to connect with online authorities in your industry or field. Start building relationships with other key players, and when you feel close enough to them, reach out for opinions on trending topics, or potential partnerships. This can be a great way to build and align yourself with those who share the same interests as you.

4. An increase in direct traffic can be linked to increased brand awareness

Measuring social media reach can be a difficult feat. While we know that people are seeing our ads and content, it can be hard to determine if that translates directly into new sales and customers.

Don’t feel discouraged if you can’t determine a direct relationship between social media marketing and your bottom line because you may just be looking in the wrong place! When your audience sees your brand in boosted posts or social media ads, they may not click-through directly, but may instead check you out on Google, read through reviews, or go directly to your website if it’s an easy guess.

You can rest assured that by putting resources and dedication into your presence across social media platforms, that you are increasing the awareness levels of potential users about your brand and what you’re all about.

5. Boost local SEO with social media

Local businesses can leverage the power of social media to behave in ways similar to Google My Business. Social media networks, such as Facebook, can act as review platforms and map markers for Google. Facebook has a feature that allows users to ask for recommendations, where respondents can directly tag the recommended businesses. This is what makes social media so important to local and small businesses, franchises, and start-ups because it gives them the power to directly compete alongside larger companies.

And there you have it!

While users on social media and users on search platforms use each for different reasons and intentions, we can study their behaviours across each network and leverage that data to fully cultivate the power of the other. Because marketing is such an integrated ecosystem, it is important to understand how SEO marketers and social media community managers can combine forces and maximize their respective practices.

If we’ve missed any other benefits that Social Media marketing has on your SEO strategy, please share them in the comments section below!