Social Media and SEO Mistakes for Businesses to Avoid
Within business, the power of creating and maintaining social media networks can prove to be a very useful tool, which you can use to your advantage. Over recent years the shift has moved from email communication and speaking directly to your audience, to targeting your audience through social media. There are a number of popular social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, among others, that have come to the forefront of communication for businesses. Using these on a regular basis is important, as you can firstly, gain more followers and promote your business, and secondly, improve your site in terms of optimisation for search engine rankings.
However, if you have recently started your own social media accounts or you are still learning the ropes, then the following mistakes below should definitely be avoided at all costs. This will help to ensure that there is no negative impact to your reputation, your business and on your social profiles. Creating and building an online presence takes time and you don’t want to cause any damage so consider the following:
Build your networks one step at a time
Many new and smaller businesses that are unaware of social media jump in at the deep end by setting up profiles for all of the popular networks, without spending any real time on each individual site. It’s true to say that some of the networks will work better than others depending on what you are promoting and what industry you are working in, and this a step by step process.
Don’t make the mistake of setting up a number of accounts and then never really maintaining any of them. Consider some of the crucial questions such as why I am writing this content? (If you are updating your status, or sharing a link to written content), who is the information targeted for? What are the best ways to maintain interest for followers through the company’s services? Build your followers and then keep your social profiles up-to-date on a regular basis.
Optimise your social sites
Your social profiles can have a positive impact on your SEO rankings and because of this it’s worth implementing SEO techniques on your pages; the same as you would for your company website. These techniques include using some of the optimised keywords on your profile page, displaying your contact information, providing links in your content, and displaying links to your other profiles and company website where possible. Doing this will allow your sites to develop and you can focus on building your followers whilst increasing your profiles visibility in the industry.
Deal with negative feedback effectively
As the Internet is a place where people can express their opinions, at times you are bound to receive and come across negative feedback. The best thing to do in this situation is not to react in an angry manner, or verbally attack the person making the comments. What you should do is learn to address the problem, small or large, directly and seek to improve the relationship between you and the person or the company making the comments.
Dealing with the issue early is much better than staying quiet no matter how bad the problem is as this will only create more negative discussion. On the other hand, reward customers and clients who share positive contributions so that you can make these relationships stronger. You could do this by sharing a link to their site or from building up a discussion which will again build the strength of your online profile too.
Take an interest to work out which sites generate the most interest within your industry. Clients may prefer one site while customers may prefer another site. You can use the more popular sites to make your messages more specific to that group. As long as your business is ready to engage with social media or even if you have already started, these mistakes should always be remembered as ones to avoid.
