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THE SHORT OF IT: You’ve updated your site keywords and structure so Google respects you. Now what?

Social media channels can create keyword-rich content and links that boost your search rankings. Here are 5 methods for generating conversations and links in the Web 2.0 world.

If you scan the first page of results, more and more sites come up that are social networking sites. You find Twitter, Facebook, blogs, videos — these are not static websites. These are things that have a human being front and center. The rise of these social media sites offers marketers a new channel for communicating with customers to create enormous SEO [Search Engine Optimization] benefits. By reaching out to the members of those communities and encouraging customers to talk about your company and products, you can create keyword-rich content and inbound links that raise your profile with the search-engine spiders.

Most Common Methods for Using Social Media

Method #1. Be everywhere your customers are

That’s true, but in order for the links from those areas to impact your organic rankings, they must be DO FOLLOW links. Unfortunately, many social media sites, including Facebook, use NO FOLLOW links, therefore they have no bearing on organic rankings for SEO [Search Engine Optimization], but they are good for online buzz and PR for sure.

Besides spending a little time in your big social networks, also include links to each of those accounts on your company’s blog page.

Method #2. Choose a real person to interact with social communities

What I did find in trying to build better organic rankings through social media channels was that it took much more time to build a community and get links from it vs. building directory links on various websites. Many of the community links (often found in comments of blogs) were NO FOLLOW or just took too long to cultivate with little result on SEO. My time, I found for SEO, was better spent on directory linking.

Who in your company should be interacting with social communities?
Most likely needs to be you in those communities. It shows customers that your a real person who is there to help. The perception is your not going to rip people off.

In each account, I usually provide my own email address and phone number to encourage interaction with customers.

Method  #3. Blog about your customers and their passions

It’s a great strategy to promote viral linking by customers and visitors. I  found this strategy to be a good one for SEO.  I use my blog as a cornerstone of my SEO  efforts. Blogs create lots of new content and generate links back to your site that help with search engine coverage.

Use your blog to highlight interesting customers and reveal to others how they’ve created success from your solutions. People are excited about their business, their club, their band — whatever it is they’re promoting, so get clear that your setting time aside to look under your nose and promote your clients is a brilliant social media action step.

blog posts can feature images your clients and their their logo along with
o Brief stories about the customer
o Description of their business, band, blog, etc.
o Details about their process.

I’m going to be posting a new customer story at least once a month. By posting about a customer’s project, you increase the chances of that customer linking back to your blog post, and sharing the link with friends – something I see often.

At the bottom of each blog post, feature icons that let readers share the article on community and social bookmarking sites, such as:
o Slashdot
o Reddit
o Digg
o StumbleUpon

Method  #4. Create and promote videos

Search engines increasingly incorporate videos onto search results pages. Marketers need to incorporate videos into their outreach strategies.

What’s your approach for creating videos?…here’s few

Weekly features that are really like short promotional videos on products or solutions that solve issues.
Start producing videos that highlight interesting stories
Short promotional videos for new products in the retail store

I have a video camera in my office to record short promotional videos.

“Thank You” videos are one of my favorites.

Recorded short videos of yourself thanking customers for interacting with your company:
o Thank you for requesting information about XYZ
o Thank you for submitting material for a custom XYZ project
o Thank you for ordering a XYZ from a retail store

You can then email the appropriate video to customers. The goal is to get them to tell their friends about the video or post it to their blog or social networking page.

Method  #5. Talk on Twitter, but listen too

Besides personal conversations with friends, my typical posts include:
- Notifications of new blog posts, with a link to the page.
- Randomly promote what my clients are doing of value. Today I’ll tweet about Diamonds of Palo Alto and their really cool Rent Jewelry program. Yes, lease to buy.

Several times a month, I tweet the first name and location of a new customer, along with a link to their blog or site. Have you viewed your Tweets as a way to get the word out there to say you have all this other cool stuff, too.

Monitors Twitter posts to keep track of discussions related to your industry.
- I use RSS feeds from Twitter monitoring services, such as Tweetscan, to update them on any tweets related to stickers.
- Have an employee monitor those feeds and looks for opportunities to join the conversation with relevant information. For example, if a Twitter user asks the community for advice about the very things you help customers with, a company blogger can offer advice to begin a conversation.

All of my social media efforts focus on creating links and conversations that help me maintain my relevance and high organic rankings.

You increase in search rankings because you’re interacting with people more. When you do that, your going to have others blog about you, Tweet about you, talk about you in their Facebook profiles. They exchange information with their peers and friends on social networks, hence they’re going to talk about you.

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