Social Media Tips for Your Business — Social Media Optimization

Why social media optimization is important to your business? Facebook is the biggest social network worldwide with 2.5 billion monthly active users in 2019 and the number keeps growing.

Social media is where people on a global scale go to exchange ideas and information and to socialize. Social media plays a very important role for your SEO and marketing your business due to over one billion active people just on Facebook.

Facebook fan page allows you to keep your business separate from your personal life. It gives you the opportunity to grow your fan base and engage with your fans. You can customize your page with lots of useful apps.

With majority of consumers spending a lot of time on social media, you can’t afford to ignore it if you plan to run a successful business on the Internet. A strong social media presence is needed to ensure business success. Between Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and other social media platforms, your business bound to get noticed with the right strategy.

Social media offers any business the opportunity to create a page and to connect with customers. The process of building your business page is the same regardless of business’s size.

There are several ways to maximize your social media marketing strategies. Here are some tips for social media optimization:

Be present on all major platforms

You don’t have to be present on every social media platform if your time doesn’t allow you to manage them effectively. However, to reap the benefits of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website and also to get noticed and spread the word about your business, you should consider Facebook, Google+, and Twitter to begin with. Depending on the type of your business, you may also want to consider LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.

Set up a business Facebook page

Facebook changes its interface and appearance on a regular basis, but setting up a page is easy. If you already have a personal account, you only need to select a business name and set up a page to promote your business.

A Facebook Page, also referred to as a Fan Page, is single page that you can create off the Facebook.com domain for anything you want. It can be a page with information about your business, links, RSS, a message forum box, etc. You can get unlimited fans for your Facebook page. It is a great way to get new prospects to discover about your offer.

Use the Choose a category drop-down menu to select the right category that fits your business. Add your business logo, product or service information, and a URL leading to your company’s website.

You can build the page by initially focusing on the business news feed. Describe your business, add contact information, and post one or two discussion questions.

Complete your company profile

You’ll need to provide a brief company profile. Include telephone number, email address, and a website link where customers can reach you. In addition, provide brief information about your business, its mission, objectives or products or services to inform potential customers and build their confidence.

Make sure your profile provide brief, but complete information. Try to provide useful information with every post in order to build loyal fans.

Building up your Facebook page

Your page will not be a truly professional until it has a vanity URL. A vanity URL is a short, easy-to-remember URL like (facebook.com/mypagename) which describes a custom website address you create for your Facebook fan page.

You will need to have at least 25 fans to be eligible to create vanity URL. Once you have this many fans, visit facebook.com/username where you see an interface that lists a drop-down of all your owned Facebook Pages. Select the one that have at least 25 fans to be able to name it. Choose a name and then click Submit.

Remember that some of the names may not be available because they have been already granted. Beware that Facebook Page URLs cannot have underscores or dashes in them, but they can use periods.

You may wonder whether to create a Facebook Page or a Facebook Group. Facebook Page is considered as a website within Facebook for a particular subject that gets updated by you.

Facebook Group is like a message board, which gets moderated by you. The messages are posted by you and other members. A Facebook Group cannot get a branded URL, and its URL is a long string of numbers.

Social media optimization

Most businesses are ensuring to have a presence on major social media sites. However, optimizing it is much tougher than putting a brand on many interfaces.

Here are some general tips to optimize for social media:

Make sure your design for each media matches to that platform. If you lack skills, you may have to hire someone for the design and development of each platform.
You can use logo, but try to choose an image that represents your company, product or service.
In order to be shared, you need to become an authority in your chosen field. It takes time to build this reputation, which requires work and continuous engagement. What makes you unique and different from others? The best social media strategy is to share valuable content that is original showing who you are and what you can offer. Show what makes your business different and how you can help potential customers.
Building a good social presence is about building trust. People should see you as a reliable and qualified source of information. It also requires inviting feedback to build your reputation with your audience.
Create unique and valuable content for your business page. Do you have any useful content to share? You have to make sure your content is original and it is not a duplicate that exist on your site or someone else’s site.
You can be useful to your potential customers by providing informational videos, infographics, industry news, etc. You can also provide subscriptions such as RSS and newsletters.
Images and photos are very valuable. People are more likely to notice content with images as opposed to plain text. Be sure to display quality and large images that can be picked up by other social sites.
Make sure your content is shareable. Add well designed share buttons to your content that are clearly visible.
Make sure your links have both title and description. The titles and images should be easily shareable on all major social media.
Make sure to optimize the tags, and develop rich snippets with all available options.

Acquire fans

Ask anyone you know to visit the new business page and click the “Like” button. Send an email to your customers and subscribers and let them know about your social media site and mention why they should become fans. You may want to entice them with early knowledge of new products or special offers. You may even provide coupon code that can be accessed once a user becomes a fan of your page.

Engage fans with valuable content

You need to make sure to post quality information on a regular basis that your fans can interact with. Here are a few ideas when creating content for your fan page:

Use social media primarily for information sharing and discussion, rather than direct promotion of your product, service, or your business. Social media platforms are an excellent way of building relationships with your followers.
Remember that people particularly on social networks are not looking forward to sales pitch, but want to be inspired. What you offer must grab and hold people’s attention by providing what they want, listen more, and show that you care and how you can help them.
Start a meaningful discussion, and then post questions to spark a lot of replies and likes. When people comment on your posts, it will show up on their wall and everyone they are friends with can see it, which is a good exposure for you. You don’t have to respond to every comment you receive, but try to be helpful to interact with your fans.
Post informational or entertaining updates to attract attention. Visual and timely updates can increases fan engagement and attract new fans.
Share exclusive offers like free samples or discount prices to your fans for a limited time period. Use call to action button to allow your audience to sign up, shop, or watch a video to help increase likes, sales, engagements, and traffic.
Try to post at least 2-3 times a week, and to go through all the messages you receive and reply as needed. It may take 10-15 minutes per allocated day to keep up with your messages. Some information and news items can be scheduled in advance. Pick a good time, such as early morning or late evening like 8 PM.
Maintain an active presence on your social site so that people can identify with your business, blog or website, and keep up with your postings. Remember that “out of sight, out of mind.”
Solicit feedback on how you can improve your business page. Try to get as many positive reviews about your business as possible by actively asking for reviews from satisfied customers.

You need to develop plans to monitor and track your progress and success as you continue to test different approaches and topics to see what works and what doesn’t for you. Also, remember that social media is just one avenue to reach out to potential customers. In order to be successful and run a profitable business, you’ll need to use other marketing tools both online and offline.

For additional articles written by John Stanford, see alliedpublishing.com/seo. John Stanford is the author of Ultimate Guide to Search Engine Optimization.

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