Did you know that one person can mention brand names up to 12 times a day? Take this conversation for example:
“Did you see my new iPhone?”
“Yeah, I’m not sure I like Apple products.”
“Are you crazy? Apple is on the cutting edge with this kind of stuff!”
Though many businesses are still reluctant to get on the bandwagon, developing a legal social media policy for your corporation can be highly beneficial to their profitability.
Optimum7 can partner with legal counsel to develop a working social media policy for your corporation that will be legally binding, so that you can finally reap the advantages of allowing your employees access to social media sites while still protecting your businesses. As an SEO company, we understand the positive impact that granting social media access to your employees can have on your bottom line.
My friends, the answer is yes. If you have an old Twitter account, or worse don’t have one at all, it’s time to stop resisting and get on the Twitter bandwagon, because it can help your SEO rankings apparently.
Tweeting matters
A recent article by the editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan stated that Twitter can impact your SEO and Google rankings, so you better get Tweeting. Sullivan pointed out that:
Yes, yes and yes. Social media is just another way to generate backlinks to your site, which might help you rank higher –depending on what people are saying about your business.
With the popularity of social media rising, specifically Facebook well over 500 million users and growing, it’s a market you can’t afford to ignore. That’s thousands of potential leads, customers and contacts for your business. Additionally Facebook has its own pay per click campaigns so you can reach out to even more users, specifically by their interests, age and gender if necessary. Facebook has also recently introduced a whole new level of ecommerce on their site, so all your business has to do is tap into it.
Back in the old days, companies were always leery of jumping on technologies and new mediums that they perceived would damage their security and drive down employee productivity. Many still are. When telephones first came out, employers thought they should never have one on each employee’s desk, because then they would call people all day. When personal computers were new, many of the employees had to share them or they weren’t allowed to have personal disks, because employers were afraid that employees would not spend their time doing company business, or would leave the premises with copyrighted, proprietary information and take it straight to their competitor. Then there were company laptops, company cell phones and being able (or unable) to access the internet at work. The cry was still the same: employees will stop working and security will be compromised.
Social media laws / guidelines are still pretty murky at best at most companies. While many corporations are aware that they need to have a social media presence, that they need to wage social media marketing campaigns, and that they have to actively manage their company’s online social reputation, very few are wading in to take advantage of the many benefits that could come from allowing their employees access to social media sites while at work.
It is incredibly important for corporate entities to develop legal guidelines regarding the use of social media by their employees. Although the prevailing instinct is to prohibit the access of all social media sites from employee use, this may not be the wisest course of action. Companies might be surprised to know that their greatest fears will not come true if they have a corporate legal policy. In other words, despite sounding counter intuitive, their employees won’t spend all day ignoring their work as they Facebook their friends and corporate secrets will not end up on the web.
The popularity and market penetration of social media sites have made their utilization important for businesses who wish to keep their online presence visible to the public. Unfortunately, in a post WEB 2.0 world, more visibility can mean more vulnerability. Consumer generated content means that individuals have more power than ever to affect your company, by either supporting you or by criticizing you. The new word of mouth is spread through sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Stumble Upon, YouTube (and others), and through blogs, RSS feeds, open discussion forums, and consumer review websites.
The face of Internet marketing is changing on a daily basis. Recently, online business owners and Internet Marketers have begun to focus more and more of their marketing efforts towards integrating social media. Social media sites like Twitter, FaceBook, StumbleUpon, Digg and YouTube have given marketers a never before seen opportunity to tap into a market that is prequalifed. FaceBook, perhaps the most popular of the social media sites, has become a focal point. FaceBook marketing, which includes both PPC campaigns through FaceBook itself and incorporating FaceBook features into a business website, is likely to become a critical function on online marketing programs.
By now almost everyone with a website is aware of the concept of search engine optimization. Not everyone knows about social media optimization and social bookmarking. Like SEO, SMO is a way to increase the visibility of your website in order to gain more targeted traffic and boost conversion rates. The techniques for social media optimization are different than SEO techniques, but it is possible to implement a successful SMO campaign by understanding each step of the process.
On the surface, Search Engine Optimization and Social Media may appear to be two separate, unrelated means of online marketing, public relations and promotion. However, closer inspection and clear understanding of what drives the search engines towards generating the most relevant results and what the Social Media represents in terms of human interaction, leads to the inescapable conclusion that there really is a close connection between Search and Social Media.
Inbound links, or Backlinks, hold a lot of weight in search engine algorithm because these links show spiders that a website holds valuable information that is useful to other websites. For this reason, seasoned marketers are always on the lookout for creative ways to get inbound links. One of the current methods that have proven to be a stable source of these links for internet marketing is Twitter.