Issue Seven (7) – Building your network
– The social kind
Your SEO Guide starts here:
Issue 1 – The first step – Choosing your keywords
Issue 2 – Planning your site – Making the structure
Issue 3 – Social Media – Building your brand
Issue 4 – Tell search engines where you are
Issue 5 – Link building – Get your votes
Issue 6 – Write your articles – Blogging
Issue 7 – Building your network – The social kind
Issue 8 – Spending money – Paid advertising
Oh my God! Are you already at issue 7??? Have you read 1 through 6? Of course you have, and now you want to make friends.
So firstly, how do we pick which platform to use? There are so many social networks. According to Wai Kai Pedia there are approximately 210 social networking sites on the line. SoooOoOoO, how does one person (or company) pick which MySpaces to advertise or have accounts with, when dealing with the interwebs?
I’m not here today to tell you what to pick. I am here today to tell you what to pick as a baseline, and where to go from there.
Numero Uno – Twitter
You must, must, must become The Twits. You really, really, really want to become Mr Twit. See “Mr. Twit was a twit. He was born a twit. And, now at the age of sixty, he was a bigger twit than ever.”
You see, on November 18, 2014, Twitter announced that they would be indexing every public Tweet since 2006. That means, there are so, so many Twits out there on Alta Vista, you wouldn’t believe it.
Check out this crazy website – http://www.internetlivestats.com/twitter-statistics/
There are apparently 6,000 tweets every second. Do you know that this means, it’s 500 Million Tweets PER DAY. That means (we are moving down the meaning line) there are 500 million pages indexed on search each and every single day.
SooOOoOoOoO, you need to be in there. Not only do you need to be in there, you need to be tweeting. Every time you tweet, your company name is getting put in the Google.
Numero Duo – LinkedIn
You must, must, must join the Microsoft network and get yourself on LinkedIn. If you are a company, you need to be on the company social networking site. And so, make a company page. Set up all your info, go around to every employee’s desk and force them to enter the fact they are working at your company.
Look at our search results:
Look what comes up third! LINKEDIN!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Look at what happens when I search ‘Patricia DigiGround’:
Look what came up? Patricia’s LinkedIn, beacuse she’s got DigiGround on her LinkedIn.
Finally, Numbero three (I don’t know what is number three in Italian)
You need Google+
Why?
Cause it’s Google. The end.
Okay, now you have some social setup, the base requirement. What you need to work out is, what OTHER socials do you need? Is your product/company, highly visual? You need Instagram. Is your product/company something that requires a lot of customer interaction? You need Facebook. Is your product/company something about design? You need BeHance. So, what you really need to do is, ask yourself what your company/product is, and then find social media platforms that match it.
But, before you go ahead and jump on every single platform that matches your company/product. Work out your time.
You have to set your baseline post amount. It goes something like this (numbers are a guide only).
- Twitter – 20 interactions per day (10 posts, 10 favourites/follows/retweets/replies)
- LinkedIn – 1 post per week, 1 interaction per week (post in a group, respond in a group)
- Google+ – 3 posts per day
Then, go ahead and write those posts in advance. Time yourself and see how long it took. Because you need to be able to do this regularly. Consider for yourself an advance calendar. Like, you could say “Every Friday, I am going to do one week’s worth of posts”. See how long it takes you to write:
- 70 Tweets
- 1 LinkedIn Post
- 21 Google Plus Posts
Time yourself. Time yourself. TIME YOURSELF.
How much time do you want to spend? If your time spent, matches your time you want to spend, don’t add any more social media platforms. If you are spending less than you want, add another platform. Time yourself again. If your time spent is more than you want, reduce your post target.
Social media is a pivotal part of SEO, but it should not be your life. Make sure you have the time to write the posts, posts the posts, and respond to posts. Otherwise, you’re going to continually fail.
There is a very important rule to social. If you can’t do anything, then don’t do anything. This means, if you can’t keep up your post schedule on a platform, then remove the platform.
