Social Media Is Growing - And You Should Be Growing With It!

Social media plays a big part in internet marketing today. Whether you own a blog, an ecommerce site, affiliate site etc., social media plays a big role in your business. Or at least it should. 3 years ago social media was just another way of saying ‘facebook’, but since then the social media scene has exploded with options and possibilities for websites to reach out to its target groups. The most significant social media today platforms are Google+ and Facebook with Twitter a close third, but also Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr now have a big audience. What social media platform a website should focus on of course depends on what business it runs, but there is no doubt that a general focus needs to be put on social media.

The confusing part in all the social media hype is where it is most beneficial and hence where the biggest emphasis should be put when engaging in social media. Is it for SEO purposes mainly, or is it to create traffic and relationships for your website? The answer is that there is no right answer. It first and foremost depends on what kind of marketing strategy you run with your website. However, it is not yet entirely clear to the business how much social media affects the SERP. Lots of testing is showing that Google+ engagement and in particular ‘+1’s have the biggest effect from a SEO perspective, but most experts agree that to post and create social media content entirely for the purpose of SEO would be a big mistake.

The reason that it would be a mistake is not the uncertainty of the extent to how much social media engagement affects SEO. Everyone agrees that it certainly doesn’t hurt doing it unless black hat tactics are being used. No, the real reason that it would be a mistake is that by focusing solely on SEO, the website miss out on all the networking potential there is in social media. This is where people are, and by being where others in the same niche as you are, you can get the traffic to your website more easily than through the SERP.

In the long run it is all connected. The more followers/like/retweets you get, the more authority your website will get, and the bigger is the likelihood that your ranking will be better. The SEO part of social media might take a while, but building relationships will benefit your website almost immediately driving traffic to your website.