In recent years, SEO and social media marketing have steadily become more entwined to the point that the success of one is now heavily impacted by the that of the other. In all aspects of marketing, it is always helpful to hone your skills in as many areas as possible. As such, chances are that you have already begun to polish your SEO and explore the best channels via which to promote and sell your brand on social media.
However, by understanding the ways in which these two disciplines are not only interdependent, but complementary, you can optimize your approach to get the most from both. Here are a few of the key correlations to keep in mind when planning your marketing strategy.
1. Social Selling Drives Referral Traffic
Naturally, this is the first point that springs to mind. Social selling is most powerful when customers are sharing, commenting on, or otherwise interacting with your content. Positive engagements with your brand on social media help to build social proof, and inspire others to check out your website, or purchase your product.
As an added bonus, integrating social media with your chosen eCommerce platform is generally straightforward — the majority of these platforms recognize the demand for this functionality, and the long-term benefit of combining on-site optimization with social selling.
This ease of integration means that you can branch out into social selling without needing to start everything from scratch. Instead, once you have researched the best channels to use for your chosen audience, you can build your sales copy and visual elements upon your existing, on-site content.
For example, this could mean turning your Instagram feed into a social storefront, driving sales through Facebook ads, or boosting conversions by engaging with prospects on Twitter.
2. Quality Content Boosts Visibility On Social Media
High quality, authoritative content is always good to have. It makes your site seem more professional, and it demonstrates that you and your brand know what the audience wants, and how to provide it. In addition, the more value your content offers, the more likely it is to be shared, because your audience will want to impart that usefulness to others.
Take the time to think about the sort of questions your audience needs you to answer, and cover those points in your content. This means providing accurate information, actionable guidance and a message that is presented in a tone that appeals to your readership.
Keeping SEO best practices in mind when creating this content will immediately make it more visible on social media because it is more likely to appear in searches and connect with potential customers. Well-crafted content is also easier for content delivery algorithms to match with the appropriate taste profiles, helping you to reach the right audience far more efficiently.
3. Social Media Influence Boosts Authority
Just as SEO helps your content to reach the right people on social media, engaging fans and developing influence on social media enables you to increase the perceived authority of your content.
This is because familiarity significantly increases consumer trust in a brand, giving immediate weight to content released by a recognized entity. In addition, as more users share and interact with your content, this will raise its authority with search engines because these interactions demonstrate the usefulness of the content to its audience.
4. SEO Affects Social Media Searches
It is important to remember that social media platforms such as Facebook still operate as search engines, making effective targeting and use of well-researched keywords just as important for your visibility on social media as it is for ranking on typical search engines.
By planning your content to reach the correct audiences, you can greatly increase the likelihood of engaging successfully, and converting those prospects with your content. In addition, the data collected by social media sites can help you to improve your content for your chosen audience, further boosting your potential for making sales, and driving traffic to your website.
5. Build Backlinks Via Social Sharing
It’s no secret that having a high number of authoritative inbound links to your content can improve your search engine ranking. This comes from your own hard work guest posting, engaging with industry peers, and getting influencers on board with your brand.
When your content inspires followers to share it, you immediately increase not only visibility, but the raw number of links back to your website. While this may seem like a minor point, and should not be taken as a definitive measure of success, it is a good way to measure the initial impact of a piece of content, and the type of audience that has shown the most interest in that content.
6. On-Site Engagement Drives Traffic to Your Social Media
One more strength of the relationship between SEO and social selling is that it is not a one-way street. In fact, since many eCommerce platforms enable integration with social selling avenues (as Shopify does with Facebook), you can encourage social sharing from your website, allowing you to drive sales organically, while also increasing your social media following.
Similarly, as you develop a following on your chosen platforms, you can reach out directly to your audience with push notifications via native social apps. Not only do these messages ensure that your brand stays in the mind of your audience, but they also can increase engagement.
This is because push notifications are far more likely to be read than e-mails and online adverts, simply because users are more in the habit of scanning through these messages. Yet e-mails can be shelved for later, and adverts may be blocked altogether.
In addition, clicking through from these notifications can take users directly to your sales content, making it as straightforward as possible for them to go from receiving your notification, to making a purchase. This ease of use is a powerful conversion tool, and one that allows you to fully capitalize on the combined strengths of a well-crafted message, and a carefully-structured social selling strategy.
Ultimately, the correlations between social selling and SEO are fairly intuitive, but they can significantly impact the success of your marketing strategy. By taking the time to improve cohesion between these two aspects of your brand promotion, and capitalize on their overlaps, you can develop sturdy foundations upon which to build and expand your business.
Naturally, finding the correct balance takes time, and some social selling platforms may be better suited to your business than others. Nevertheless, with the right research, and continuous optimization of your approach, you can help your brand achieve its potential, and secure the audience and popularity it deserves.
Victoria Greene is a digital content and marketing consultant. She regularly shares tips on her blog Victoria Ecommerce, shedding light on the various ways that companies can promote their brands online.The post 6 Ways Social Selling and SEO Complement Each Other appeared first on SiteProNews.
Source: Site Pro News
Link: 6 Ways Social Selling and SEO Complement Each Other
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