You know that social media and search engines are some of the top ways your customers find you.
What are you doing about it? And, do those two things work together?
Absofreakinglutely.
Here’s a breakdown of how social media works with your Google search rankings and how you can make a marketing plan so it all works together.
Google and Social Media: The Basics
Go ahead and Google your name or your business' name. What comes up on the first page?
It should be your website, Twitter account, Google My Business information, LinkedIn and Facebook.
Why does it work like that? While the social platforms have evolved from websites into apps, advertising platforms and more, at their core, they started as just websites. And now they’re websites that are visited by a lot of people, frequently, and they’ve been around for 10 or more years.
That means that Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram high Google search ranks.
When you set up your business account on these social networks, you benefit from their rankings - and it should get your business in the top search results for your company name.
Google and Twitter
Disclaimer: Twitter is not right for every business.It’s great for sharing information, building your brand or as a customer service tool. It does take some time to build a real audience of your target customer and Twitter does have a problem with bots.
If you do want to use Twitter as part of your marketing plan, there are benefits that spill over into Google search results:
Searches using hashtags will populate Twitter as one of the first, if not the first, results. For example, Google searching for #realestate brought up:
Out of the 2.2 BILLION results, Twitter ends up at the top.
And if you’re actively tweeting using a hashtag specific to your industry or what your target audience would use? You could show up there.
2. Twitter is powerful in Google’s eyes – so your Twitter handle will show up pretty high in the search results for your business’ name – probably above your Facebook page. Case in point: Coldwell Banker Real Estate. This company’s Twitter handle showed up right under their website.
And their Facebook page was way at the bottom of the search engine results on the first page. If you’re interested in learning more about optimizing your Tweets and Twitter handle to help your search results, check out this Social Media Examiner article.
Google and Facebook
Like Twitter, your Facebook business page should show up in search results for your brand name.
Facebook’s customer reviews from your page also show up in Google search results.And some surveys have even shown that consumers prefer to leave reviews on Facebook, over Google or Yelp, because they’re already on the platform.
What does that mean for your business?
Well, if you have a review request included in your marketing strategy – i.e. you ask customers to review your business at the point of service, on the receipt or in a follow-up email – then it may be a good idea to direct them to your Facebook page. That way, you’ll get reviews for Facebookers and Googlers alike.
Google and Pinterest
Pinterest isn’t social like Facebook or Twitter is. Sure, you can comment and be “social” on it, but it’s predominantly used to organize recipes, crafts, outfits and other ideas. It’s like a digital bulletin board – you find something you like and you pin it so you can look at it later.
And for businesses, it has become a top resource for shoppers. In fact, 87 percent of Pinterest users have purchased a product because of Pinterest.
So how would you get your Pin to show up in Google search results? Like SEO and Twitter, you’d have to focus on specific keywords. On Pinterest, you would:
Create a board with that keyword in the title
Add pins to the board
Promote your board
Add new content consistently
Kim Garst – a social media guru – explains how to do it in more detail here.
Now, how does that apply to your marketing plan?
Things get a little tricky here - but it's not rocket science, so you got this.
See, it's a simple cycle:
You research keywords for what your target customers want to know
You create content to answer those questions or help them find answers or information
You post it on your website as page content, blogs, videos, etc.
You promote that content on your social media
Your social media followers - if interested - click on those links
They read/consume your content, telling Google, "Hey, this is some good stuff right here"
Then Google says, "OK, this content is valuable"
Then your website gets boosted in search results - hopefully boosting you to the first page of those search engine rankings
Simple – not necessarily easy – but simple.
And that is how Google works with your social media. It’s also why you should have a documented marketing plan - to make sure all those pieces - your Facebook, your Twitter, your blog, your Instagram, your website content, your YouTube page - are working together to bring you more business.