In the past few years, more and more businesses have started using social media campaigns to develop and improve their online SEO (Search Engine Optimization) performance.  The main aim of this is to drive more traffic to their website, which in turn helps to increase profit and revenue.

This may sound complicated, but in fact it is quite straight forward.  You just need to learn how to maximize your social media efforts.

The Growing Popularity of Social Media

It may not seem like it, but social media is becoming even more popular!  I’m sure many of you reading this will already be active on at least one social media site, but many people are only just being introduced to it.

It had long been though that social media was only for the young, but more older people are using it to connect with their friends and family across the world.  There are also many developing countries like China, India and Brazil who are only just connecting millions of its population online for the first time.

This is why social media is still gaining popularity and is set to continue for some time yet.  This, of course, is great for business as the world becomes a smaller place as more and more people connect with one another.

Social Media Is Good For Business

The growing popularity of social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. has resulted in a huge amount of people linking to websites every day.  People are sharing their favorite videos, images, recipes, offers, information, etc. from across the internet with their friends and family.

This vast sharing of information is great for business as you have easier access to a large amount of people.  All it takes is one potentially good idea and you can have the world talking about it!  Of course the hard bit is coming up with that idea!

This is why there are so many benefits to using social media and SEO techniques together to maximize brand awareness of a business.  The aim of using social media and SEO process together seems to be the future of online marketing, with many companies having already made this leap.  It makes sense when you think about it.  Instead of just relying on each method separately, you are using both in conjunction with one another to make them work more effectively.

For example, instead of using social media to just talk with customers, you can use it to identify certain keywords that they tend to use.  With this information, you can then use these targeted keywords to improve your SEO rankings and drive more traffic to your site.  Again, this is easier than you might think.  You can use Twitter, for example, to find common hash tag’s that your followers are using.

Utilize social media to maximize the use of keywords to improve search traffic, while at the same time preserve the quality of the content for the benefit of the user.

Establishing a Community with your Brand

For your business to become successful online, you need to think about trying to build a community around you.  When I say this, I mean building a community of visitors, customers, regular readers, consumers, etc. who are interested in your business.

An example of this could be a website that focuses on fashion.  They could build a community of people around them that are interested in their latest clothes, designs, fashion shows, deals, etc.  This way, that community will independently talk about and share your content with their friends, on social media sites.

But, in order for you to establish a community around your brand, you need to spend time trying to identifying who your target audience is!  After all, these are the people who you are aiming to sell to.  A good starting point would be to look at what type of people are currently visiting your site, who is sharing your content, on what social media sites are they sharing it, etc.

You can find out this type of information by using things like Google Analytics or social media sites own software, such as Facebook Insights.

Social Media Goals & Objectives

Social media can be the perfect way to promote your business to the right demographic, as almost always, those that take part in your social media pages are there because they are interested in what you are offering.

Social media can also be a great way for you to reach out and establish a dialogue with your customers. Receiving feedback from them and getting new ideas from your existing customers can only help you improve your business in order to reach more potential customers.

Thus, social media campaigns today act as vehicles to improve search in the different social communities themselves. The content that is linked to via social media serves to improve your SEO ranking, as the more links you have pointing to your content the better!

Of course, when using social media in this targeted way, it can be a good thing to set your own goals and objectives to aim for.  It should be noted, however, that when you define your social media goals and objectives, the parameters for success differ greatly from those of traditional direct marketing.  Marketing specialists have to use specific measuring techniques in order for them to measure the impact that their social media efforts have had across search engines.

Remember that social media can spread like wild fire; if someone notices that your accounts have a big following and an active community, they will probably jump on board and their friends and followers will jump on board as well.

If the right amount of knowledge and effort is put into social media marketing, it can bring great success to your business or website.

What do you think? Do you make an effort to use social media marketing to promote your business?  Do you use it together with SEO techniques to help boost your traffic?  Let us know by leaving a comment below!

___________________________________________________________________
Thank you to my Guest Post Author: Stephen Craig

Stephen is a part of an elite team of SEO consultants and enjoys writing about the latest trends in search engine optimization. Follow him @SCraigSEO.
___________________________________________________________________