7 replies to this topic

[Jged]

Hi,

Apologies if this question has already been posed in the past, but I am out of the loop somewhat this past 6 months due to ill parents etc etc and need to adopt a working strategy of using Facebook etc not only to help boost the websites that I have built over the years in the search engines but also to get my companies involved in the best social networks as I suspect that this side of things would be too time consuming to get involved in on their behalf? Of the social networking sites, which ones are considered the more effective?

The big question is where do I start other than a landing page for Facebook? (how do I optimise a Facebook page?) and what is proven to be the most effective from a search engine point of view? If there are any actual practical tips out there then please let me know!

I know that my companies need to embrace Facebook etc so any tips would be greatly appreciated.

[jonbey]

I cannot help really, but I def. subscribing to this thread!

From my experience of hunting down content thieves, many "notes" in Facebook contain long articles that are picked up in search.

The key I guess is to get a lot of real and enthusiastic "Likers" so that when you post news to the FB page they see it on their profile pages.

Never really had success with FB or Twitter though, probably because I do not have time enough to invest heavily in them.

[ArenaCreative]

It takes so much time and patience, but yeah - definitely start with a twitter page, and a facebook profile + fb page

It can get to be so time consuming and so much to manage. Fortunately you can automate twitter and feed your blog posts via rss feeds into twitter and facebook with tools like twitterfeed.com I wrote a whole article on this on my blog recently, just go there and search for "social networking" in the box at the top.

[AbleReach]

Register to get the FaceBook and Twitter names for your companies, for sure. Don't overlook Flickr and YouTube. Get something into the profile image part for each. To start with, just use something that looks good when it shows up as an icon. You can fine-tune later.

Social Media is for your users. <-- can't emphasize that enough!
Get Social Media sharing set up on your sites - make it easy for existing users to share however they like. Don't go overboard with a zillion platforms. Check analytics to see what your users are already using and stick to the top four. If you want more, figure out how to add a "more services" sort of button. Too many buttons = more confusion & less use. Try out the buttons yourself and fine tune configuration.

I think there are three main audience-centric questions that need to go into a Social Media plan:
- What platforms does your target market use?
- How are they using Social Media?
- What influencers in your target niche are already active and effective?

And, I think there are three parts to what has to come from the business's site itself:
- Usability (See Social Media is for your users, above)
- Content development strategy
- Communication strategy
- A sense of personality (could include that w/ communication)

[radhika]

First install a Wordpress blog on your site (if not done already). There are many plugins that connect your WP and twitter and facebook. Get connected with users.

I don't have much experience with FB, but twitter is a good way of promoting your site.

.

[burton]

I would setup a fb fanpage & promote it you can also apply different strategies on TW but the main thing is to start building relationships by commenting on others posts & RT their info this may also be helpful

Edited by iamlost, 12 December 2011 - 07:26 PM.
removed link

[glyn]

If i undestand you correctly you want to build a FB presence to augment search engine rankings? I don't think that is the way to go.

Ablereach makes good observations.

Questions to help you:

1. What do I want to achieve with my social networks?
2. Is there any factual basis that what I am trying to achieve is actually true or possible?
3. What are my competitors, or similar organizations doing in Facebook (code the type of information being shared and summarize it)
4. What is the level of feedback this type of content gets from people in these channels
5. Are there element(s) and things in FB that can be done better than in other corporate channels?
6. What content related to my business goes viral? What is the cost of producing this content? Does viral success mean more business for me?

Now, as this thread is evidence, people focus on functionality, on registration or getting something up there.

That's wrong in my book (remember, I'm a unguru).

by all means go and register pages and secure your brand name if you really feel its going to be sniped by someone.

But first you want to define your strategy and you want to define how the whole Social Media thing will interconnect with each other.

For example, I developed a Comms strategy for an ecommerce client where we defined that Twitter would just be used as a beakon for sales promotions, interlinked with the backend sales engine. That was integrated throughout their sales channels which meant that everyone knew taht if they wanted promotion, they would subscribe to twitter. They also knew that if they wanted news, they would subscribe to the blog, and conversations were handled in Facebook.

What happened here is that we defined the strategy and which tool was going to be used for which form of interaction, and then we reinforced that model throughout the business. i cannot stress the importance of this kind of planning enough. It really is the difference between having something that is long-standing and manageable and something that is fragmented and constantly causing stress because no-one knows from which direction something is going to come.

Underlining all of this is a social media policy that clearly elaborates exactly how people can engage with your organization, and what each of the different channels serve (explain is to your audiences so they know!), as well as guidelines for those members of staff that are going to be charged with monitoring the channels.

You can see those companies that have "reacted" rather than "planned" because you will find people of text in their own social media channels saying "the views expressed on this page may not be the views of X organization". Or put another way "we haven't actually worked out a satisfactory social media control mechanism to allow us to not have this statement on our pages".

once you have that kind of roadmap you can then start to look at activities to enlarge that strategy:

1. what puts eyeballs on my page
2. daily tasks
3. personality

blah blah.....

[Vince Wicks]

I hope this will help you. If you have website, you can connect your facebook, twitter, gplus into it. this 3 sites are the most use by many people. The goal of social network is to know all people about you, your product, services, personal though and many more.