I had the opportunity to make a presentation on Social Media and SEO to the Prescott Young Professionals today. Prescott Young Professionals (PYP) is a dynamic group of young entrepreneurs serving the community in a variety of professions such as attorneys, realtors, non-profit organizations, engineers, artists, marketing consultants and bankers.
What is social media?
I talked about what social media is (people having conversations online) and some of the statistics about the burgeoning use of social media. You can download the PPT here, or the PDF here.
As Lee Odden points out in Social Media and SEO, there are significant benefits in combining search engine optimization with social media marketing tactics, ranging from increased social network discovery via search to the ability to attract links for improved SEO.
Social media has proven to be a fundamental shift in the way we communicate
Lisa Reichelt, has coined the very pleasant term “ambient intimacy.” Consider the many communications technologies through history — the telephone, Morse code, semaphore, carrier pigeons, smoke signals — they are all fairly inconvenient and labor intensive. Lisa has hit on the idea that communication has become so convenient that it’s actually become ambient around us. It surrounds us wherever we want it, not necessarily when it wants us. We dip into it whenever we like. This is truly a fundamental change! (See more about how Social Media has Changed Us.)
How to get started with social media
First step: Get a blog and use it! Not much more to say about this. If you use it, it WILL produce search engine results.
Second: Survey your customers, clients, prospects, constituents. What social media do they use?
Third — become a lurker! As I’ve said before, the best way to get started with social media is to LISTEN. Listen to what people are talking about. Listen to how they are shaping their comments. Listen to what’s important to them.
Then start to search out your target market and engage them. Ask questions! Begin to Attract New Prospects with Social Media.
Once you get comfortable with one social media platform (Twitter or Facebook, for example), it’s time to expand and make a plan. See Jim Baer’s excellent Tweeting from the Tractor – 7 Secrets to Successful Social Media Farming.
When working on a social media marketing campaign, a best practice is to consider how you’ll engage in social media AFTER the campaign ends. Can you use email to invite consumers that purchased or signed up to have a dialog? Can you collect Twitter handles on your contest entry form? Hey, do you have your Twitter or Facebook address on your blog??
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