LinkedIn and SEO. Do they work together? Better than you’d expect!

Most of the time, people do SEO with Google in mind. Their goal is to make their website appear in Google’s top positions where the majority of users can find it. And while site owners often want their brands to be popular in social media as well, such a task requires its own approach – often unique to each social network. SMO and SEO are related, but they are two different beasts.

However, if you are an avid Google user, you might have come across an organic search result from the domain LinkedIn.com at least once. That’s right: Google indexes LinkedIn pages! And when Google indexes and ranks a page, then the rules of SEO apply.

Who needs LinkedIn SEO and why?

Unlike most other social media platforms, LinkedIn isn’t meant for entertainment. It’s a place for professionals to advertise their expertise and their brands. Whether you are a freelancer, an employee or a CEO, you can benefit both from using LinkedIn and optimizing your profile page.

What are the benefits?

• Reputation growth
• Forging connections
• New career opportunities
• Cultivation of your authority as an expert
• Interacting with your customers (and gaining new ones)

If you are serious about your future, then you can’t ignore LinkedIn.

And what about SEO for LinkedIn? It consists of three major elements:

1. Your profile page information;
2. Page activity (the content you post);
3. Connecting with other professionals.

Time to go into detail about the whole process.

1. Find the right keywords

Keywords and keyword optimization haunt every website with a search feature. LinkedIn is no exception. It’s just a matter of knowing how to find good keywords and how to use them.

If you have a website and use LinkedIn to promote it, then you should already have a list of good keywords – the same ones you use on your site.

But better to be safe than sorry. Cover your bases by taking these steps:

• Research the topics that your target audience is interested in – then collect the most promising key terms and phrases from there.
• Prepare a list of terms relevant to your specialty. For example, if you are a C# programmer, then you will want to use words like senior developer, Visual Studio etc. in your profile and content.

How to find keywords for LinkedIn?

There are two great places to look. The first of them is LinkedIn itself.

• LinkedIn profiles. Users with complete profiles will often have a full list of their skills and qualifications. Not only it shows what they can do, it also helps them to be found by the right people. Be sure to adopt the same tactic!
• Search bar. Suppose you are looking for a .NET developer. If you type that in LinkedIn’s search bar, you will receive a bunch of similar search queries before you even press Enter. And after you do, the search results will also have more expanded descriptions like Entry level .NET developer or Senior full stack .NET developer.

The other place to look is an SEO tool for finding keywords, such as WebCEO’s Keyword Suggestions. Type in your keyword ideas and pick the results with the highest search volume – i.e. the ones most searched by users.

2. Use images in your profile

First impressions matter always, on LinkedIn as well.

Once people find your LinkedIn profile, it will take them only a few moments to decide whether you are worth their time. Make those moments count by uploading an avatar (or profile picture) and a banner (or hero image).

What kind of avatar do you need?

• For a personal page, it must be your headshot. Upload your best, most presentable-looking photo. Suiting up and smiling are optional; facing the camera is mandatory.
• For a company page, upload the logo.

The ideal dimensions are 400×400 pixels.

What kind of banner do you need?

The background banner is much larger than the profile picture. The recommended size is 1584×396 – wide enough to cover a good portion of any screen. Just imagine how much information you can put in all those pixels!

You may correctly assume that banners need text; just don’t overdo it. A tagline is good. A call-to-action is great. Stating the value you offer is the best. Be brief and get to the point, and your visitors will be impressed.

(Image source: Cultivated Culture)

Design a good banner with these things in mind, but be careful with its bottom left corner! Don’t put anything important there – that part will be covered by your avatar.

3. Fill out your information

After the imagery comes the text. Time to fill out your profile and put your keywords to good use.

There’s a lot of work to do and many ways to enhance your page’s SEO.

Start editing your profile page and fill out as many sections as you can! Complete profiles look better than incomplete ones on any day – leave no stone unturned.

The sections are divided between three groups:

• Core: the basic information about you. Full name, current position, services, education, skills and so on. This is the bare minimum you need to fill out – but do feel free to keep going.
• Recommended: if you have any certifications, licenses, courses or recommendations, this is the place to display them.
• Additional: if you are a real expert, you can show off your awards, patents or publications here. This group also includes sections for your contact information and the languages you speak, so make sure to add them.

As a rule of thumb, the greater a section’s character limit, the better it is for using keywords. For example, sections like Headline and About are where you describe what you do, making them perfect for adding a keyword or two.

What about the company pages on LinkedIn? In terms of filling out your profile, they work almost the same. They have just two more very important sections:

• Products: describe what you are selling, pricing plans, highlights, videos and screenshots.
• Jobs: your open positions.

LinkedIn appreciates every bit of relevant information you add. The more you can tell about yourself and your company, the more chances you have to catch the attention of the right people.

4. Publish high-quality, SEO-friendly content

Now that your profile page looks great and optimized, it’s time for the next step: page activity.

Just like every other platform, LinkedIn values original, high-quality content. Even better if it’s optimized to be picked up by search algorithms.

Since Google indexes LinkedIn pages, you can safely follow the same SEO methods you want to use for any other website:

1. Make posts and publish articles. As always, they need to match the user search intent and offer value to users.
2. Use eye-catching headlines. Make the viewers interested as soon as they see your post in their feed.
3. Post often. At least a couple times a week will do, but if you can do it even more often – power to you.
4. Create many different types of posts. Don’t restrict yourself to text posts. Diversify your LinkedIn content by posting images, videos and polls as well.
5. Include keywords. Use them throughout your texts in a natural way, avoid stuffing and cannibalization (optimizing multiple pages for the same keywords). Titles, headings and image captions love keywords.
6. Add call-to-actions. If you want visitors to not just read, but also do something beneficial to you after reading (like buy your product), this step is a must.
7. Respond quickly! Engagement is a powerful ranking signal on LinkedIn. When users comment under your posts, be quick to reply and give them a reaction. That way, you will appear in their notifications and prompt them to interact with your page some more.

5. Create connections

Now you have an optimized LinkedIn profile page and high-quality content. All that’s left is to somehow bring visitors to your profile. But how?

No matter how well you optimize your content for search, it will never be enough on its own. This is where LinkedIn’s main weapon comes in: connecting with other people.

What can – and should – you do on LinkedIn?

1. Follow other people and groups. When you follow someone, use the opportunity to introduce yourself and state your expectations. Just remember that on LinkedIn, being civil and professional is an absolute must. (Don’t take Inigo Montoya’s example too literally.)

2. Comment under and react to other people’s content. The best comments are the ones where you add your 5 cents about something the original poster may have missed, or ask questions about that.
3. Make your own posts in groups. Take the initiative and start discussions yourself – that will earn you a lot more attention.
4. Answer questions. If someone pings you by mentioning your name, it’s your chance to demonstrate your expertise. The better your answer, the more likely you are to impress the right people.

Most of the time, your feed will be filled with content from the pages you follow, and the opposite is also true. More followers = more visibility.

Be active on LinkedIn, expand your bubble and e-meet as many professionals as you can. Doing so will open the path to the next major step in LinkedIn SEO…

6. Collect endorsements and recommendations

After you connect with someone and add them to your network, you unlock the option to endorse their skills and give them recommendations. Naturally, it works both ways: people in your network can do the same for you.

(Image source: Cultivated Culture)

It doesn’t get more straightforward than that. Other professionals in the field directly vouching for you – could you ask for a better boost to your reputation?

It’s obvious why LinkedIn sees this as a ranking signal. If there are people who can confirm that you are a pro, then you definitely deserve getting picked up by the search algorithm.

Just like with customer reviews, the best way to get endorsements and recommendations is to ask the people you’ve worked with.

7. Track and analyze relevant metrics

How do you know your LinkedIn SEO strategy is working?

If your profile is buzzing with notifications, if you are getting job offers or CVs day and night, then you’ve definitely succeeded. But that probably won’t happen as soon as you make your first comment somewhere.

It will be a slow, gradual process that you can monitor with special tools – and adjust your strategy based on your progress (or lack thereof).

LinkedIn Analytics display how users interact with your profile and how popular it is overall. Those metrics include:

• Number of your followers;
• How many people viewed your profile;
• How many times you appeared in other people’s search.

Analytics for company pages will have even more data:

• User engagement (likes, shares, comments);
• Clicks, impressions and CTR for your posts;
• Follower demographics (location, industry, seniority);
• Competitor metrics (followers, engagement).

What if you are managing multiple LinkedIn business pages? In this case, you should connect them all to WebCEO’s LinkedIn Insights tool – and you’ll be able to switch between their data in a single click.

With all relevant data at your fingertips, you can plan the next step to make your LinkedIn SEO strategy succeed.

Boost your LinkedIn page with SEO Sign Up Free

The post LinkedIn SEO: How to Optimize Your Profile Like a Professional appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Part III: Track Your Success

We’ve come to the last but not least part of our social media optimization journey. Today you will learn how to analyze the results of your social media optimization campaign and what instruments you might need for this task.

TRACK YOUR SUCCESS

Step #1: How to Track the Results of Your Social Media Campaign

[ Quantify your success with Social Analytics Tools ]

Social media marketing ranges from “somewhat effective” to “very effective” for businesses.

Your results will come in figures. Real success comes in high figures.

A lot of statistics for business accounts are provided by social media platforms in the form of APIs. Through WebCEO or stand-alone social media analytics tools, you can access these data pipes. You will need to analyze percentages, graphs, and diagrams. The advantage of using tools is they offer a coherent investigation and control over your performance on multiple social media platforms starting from the research steps and going straight to the gathering of results.  

Let’s learn some of them:

1. Buffer

Buffer is a platform where, apart from analyzing the results of your content promotion, you can publish on major social media platforms. You will get access to the following helpful features:

• post writing and planning: write posts and add them to a calendar to control the timing and campaigns dedicated to special events on specific platforms;
• posts an “achievements” analysis: get stats on the quantity of new followers, engagement rate, unique reach on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, etc.;
• collaborate with your team: if you work on a team, you will get the necessary elements for building a convenient working environment for team members; sharing the responsibilities will become significantly easier and more effective;
• communicate with your customers: start a conversation with interested customers, reply to their messages, sort them by tags and folders, give your team members the right to take part in specific conversations.

2. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo will lead you through the whole process of promoting on social media. Research, planning, content creation, results analysis; cooperation with influencers will no longer be a tough mission.

• pick up what is trending now and follow the newest ideas: analyze the freshest content on the Internet by different locations and time of release. Build a clear picture of who you can attract and surprise new users with;
• analyze the essentials: get a list of formats your audience might be most satisfied with and find out why your competitors outrun you;
• find your influencers on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, analyze their performance by different metrics; you will have an opportunity to examine the influencers who work with your competitors and identify their strong and weak sides.

3. Social Sprout

Sprout Social will help you organize your working process and make it easier, helping you and your team act in rhythm. 

Sprout Social provides everything a user needs for research, analysis, planning and publishing. You will be able to manage your publications: create drafts, schedule them and add to a corporate calendar, administer several platforms simultaneously and assign specific team members to particular tasks.

Sprout Social creates all the conditions for efficient work with messages. Your team members will be able to hold conversations with customers as soon as a team leader gives permission. You will receive reports on your social media performance.

4. TapInfluence

If you are going to work with influencers, this platform is totally for you. It will help investigate influencers who are popular in your niche by keywords and their performance. Get a full profile on a person you would like to cooperate with: age, gender, location, education, etc. Influencer’s history on social media, his or her insights and revenue you could get after the cooperation – these will be outlined for a user to help choose the best representative for a product. You will find a top-notch influencer for your business.

5. Google Trends

A free SEO tool provided by Google will be helpful if you don’t know what keyword to choose between several variants: it will demonstrate how popular these have been through time. This tool will also show you recently trending keywords, stories and insights.

If there are other tools for social media performance analysis, then why do I need the WebCEO Social Analytics Tools? – you might ask.

First, WebCEO puts everything in one place. This is significantly more comfortable than switching between different types of statistics on different websites and applications.

Second, WebCEO not only shows you statistics, we analyze the statistics for you and determine your weak and strong points.

Third, WebCEO helps you spy on your competitors.

All you need is to create content. WebCEO will care about everything else, for example:

WebCEO’s Web Buzz Monitoring Tool will show your mentions on different blogs, news sections and tweets. You will see the headlines of articles, the time of their publication and a link to a source and its name. Regarding Twitter, you will be provided with the list of tweets you are mentioned in, plus the number of their retweets and likes.

WebCEO’s Social Engagement Tool will tell you everything about your Facebook and Pinterest performance:

• The level of engagement on Facebook with detailed data concerning likes, shares, and comments;
• The total number of Pinterest shares;
• Your competitors’ citations in comparison with yours;
• Your social traffic in terms of the number of sessions, average bounce and conversion rate, the number of completions and their monetary value.

WebCEO’s Facebook Insights Tool takes the data from your Facebook account to present it in the most comfortable way. Using this you will be aware of:

• Your competitors’ Facebook engagement level: reactions, shares, and comments on their Facebook pages by day;
• Your page metrics by chosen periods of time in comparison with previous results: likes, feedback, organic page reach, level of post engagement, and the number of clicks on them;
• Page demographic.

To learn all this data without traveling between websites and tabs, start scanning on WebCEO and we will present you with everything at once.

No need to thank us; we are happy to do this for you!

Make Your Social Media Work for Conversions with WebCEO Sign Up Free

Step #2: What Are the SEO Benefits of Social Media Marketing?

[ Learn what you get when your website performs well on social media ]

Social media has become an essential part of SEO, even if search engines were not measuring likes and shares on various platforms (Google does this). You will help your website grow significantly because your traffic should increase to become 25% of your total traffic if you use social media.  

You will build your reputation. Social media can make you popular as soon as you go there with viral content. Give this a lot of quality, thorough research, and build your material using expert thought processes and real evidence. Write as well as you can and present your work to a relevant audience. A great job will be rewarded and lead to great results.

Why is this worthy of any attention?

If you are respected, you are linked to. Your words, your work and you yourself will have some value in the eyes of your niche audience. And here we smoothly go to the next benefit.

You will get backlinks. Not directly, because of the NoFollow aspect of links posted on social media platforms, but with the help of “mediators”. For example, you will promote your content or its extract on social media platforms. People will go to your website, if you attracted their attention, read your stuff and decide to share it on their websites. As a result, your domain authority will rise. However, always check your backlinks! Toxic or spammy links will cause harm to your website and rankings.

Use WebCEO’s Backlink Quality Check and be aware about the value of the links leading to your website.

IN CONCLUSION, social media platforms are among the most powerful instruments for marketing. The benefits you will get should easily be worthy of all the effort you are going to put in. If you still don’t use social media professionally, it’s high time to start doing this. Begin your journey with WebCEO’s Rank Tracking Tool, identify your competitors and build up a proper marketing strategy for your future success.

The post A Step by Step Guide to Social Media Optimization. Part 3 appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Part II: Writing a Post

In the previous part of the article we discussed the following points of social media optimization:

• Research,
• Target audience identification,
• Planning, and
• Social media profile optimization.

In short, that was the preparation stage.

Today in the second part, we will dive into one of the most essential parts of SMO: content creation and optimization.

Social media content isn’t the same as the content you create for websites. On social media platforms, certain rules apply. Length, style and visuals – here are just a few things to double-check and improve. This is where your creativity and passion are put in the spotlight.

It doesn’t matter what type of content you have been producing or are going to produce; social media accepts everything. You can run an educational channel or one for entertainment or news. There is a different strategy for each of these types of channels.

Step #1: How to Make Your Post Visible

[ Find your keywords and optimize your posts properly ]

Optimized social media profiles are undoubtedly important. However, you will never succeed if your posts aren’t seen by social media platform inhabitants. If you want to be noticed, use keywords.

Social media platforms work a bit like Google, exploiting keywords. However, social media’s most important keywords consist of hashtags. They should be relevant to your niche and popular among users:

There is a range of different services which can help you choose relevant and highly demanded hashtags in your niche.

Those are:

• WebCEO’s Keyword Research Tool which helps to find the best and most profitable keywords depending on the niche you perform in. It gives you suggestions on what people look for besides your query. You can easily use these substitute queries as hashtags on social media:

Not only will more people find you in searches on the social media platform itself, but Google will often show social media posts in their results if a relevant hashtag is used, like this:

• Keyhole is a good site to gather analytical data on hashtags and track results of a social media hashtag campaign; 
• Flick shows hashtag statistics in terms of general and recent popularity, month and week trends, and will provide you with a list of relevant hashtags and where they are mostly used.

Pick the best keywords with WebCEO's Keyword Research Tool Sign Up Free

Step #2: How to Behave on Different Social Media Platforms

[ Learn how to optimize your social media like a pro and use it to the fullest ]

Social media is the easiest and fastest way to spread any kind of information.

Each social media platform is used by a specific audience. You must be careful because a wrongly prepared post will have weak results. Analyze properly who uses each social media platform in terms of age, location, nationality, etc.

Each platform has its rules and features, so you should follow the game:

X (TWITTER) POSTS

Age group: 25 – 34

Since Twitter sets limit of 280 characters for a single tweet, think wisely about each word you are going to type. Each post should contain a relevant hashtag or two, so the number of characters will be reduced even more.

Surprisingly, too many tweets will actually work against you. Users don’t like their content diluted. Three or four posts per day should be enough.

There are a lot of other useful features on Twitter you can use for your marketing campaign along with hashtags. Look, please, at the screenshot below. There you can see some options to use in order to make a post more engaging:

• Photos and videos: people absolutely fall for various types of content. Make your post entertaining, interesting, and bright! Attach short, yet funny videos or photos for an ordinary follower to watch with pleasure!

Remember to optimize your image size so that those will load faster. Avoid posting photos or videos people are likely to have seen before or, worse, think they have seen before. Snap your own photos before borrowing one from the Internet. Get a photogenic friend or employees to do various things with various tools and emotions so you’ll have a library of compelling shots others have definitely never seen before.

• GIFs: These 1 to 2 second mini-videos are a lot of fun and very popular. Relevant and witty GIFs will make your post attractive and hilarious!
• Polls: people like polls because they like to share their opinions. These are also a great way to check the level of engagement on your Twitter and maybe learn what products people prefer to use in terms of your niche;
• Location: if your business is location-focused, you can add the exact location to a post or mention it in hashtags in order to analyze how much your product is demanded in a specific area:

• Threads: this will definitely come in handy if you want to share a big amount of information on Twitter and don’t want this data to be lost in a long line of replies. You can “attach” tweets to the main post and those will be the first on a queue.

How can Twitter help to increase traffic and extend your audience?

You are likely to benefit from followers’ and hashtag searchers’ actions: likes, retweets, replies, tags, embedded tweets, and other.

Track Twitter mentions of your brand and products with WebCEO Sign Up Free

FACEBOOK POSTS

Age group: 18 – 34

Facebook is one of the most comfortable places to run a business campaign and sell your content. Facebook works well even with local SEO.

Facebook is all about reactions and discussion. It is actually used by all generations since its main goal is communication. Create posts that are highly engaging: ask questions, inspire people to leave their feedback, like, share your posts, or just thank you for great content. As Facebook is created for communication between friends, give followers the opportunity to set a connection with you like with a close buddy.

On Facebook you can use a large set of features to promote your content or products. Let’s learn some more about them:

• Live video: if you a running a presentation open to the public, you will not find a more comfortable way to share it than use social media. This is easy, comfortable, and all encompassing in terms of an audience being able to search for and find you. Insert hashtags to the posts with webinars or live videos, to make finding you easier.
• Photo/video: the classic way of sharing your content. Got anything your audience would love to see? Post photos. Videos are even better.
• Life event: a great feature to bring some attention to your product and your actual location:

In the post itself:

• Feeling/Activity: not a really useful feature for optimization, but it may stir some reaction from followers and make them ask questions, like or comment on your actions:

• Tag people: invite people you want to react to your posts. Naturally, you should avoid tagging random people who have nothing to do with you or your page.
• Polls are similar to those on Twitter where people like to share their opinions.
• Check in: a location feature that specifies where an event/photo/video, etc. takes place, a useful option for location-focused businesses.

Add Facebook Insights data to your marketing mix with WebCEO Sign Up Free

INSTAGRAM POSTS

Age group: 18 – 24

Instagram is now especially favored by people interested in their local environment. The post optimization on this platform is similar to other ones mentioned earlier. Except for:

• There are a set of filters which help users to make their images prettier before publishing, and
• Carousels – a set of several photos or videos within one post.

Instagram allows live videos and STORIES. People like these update features and use them a lot. Follow their example.

Adopt the strategy of posting regular stories. They attract people even more than pictures on profiles! Trends are changing daily, and now people tend to create more stories and make posts only on special occasions. You may use a wide range of possibilities which this way of updating provides you with:

• Location;
• Mentions;
• Hashtags;
• Polls, questions, and quizzes;
• Gifs and stickers;
• Countdown;
• Music, and other.

You can upload a video or an image to your story, even insert links leading to specific websites.

Stories don’t live too long, only for 24 hours. However, if you want them to be permanent and visible on your profile, you can add them to the Story Highlights, where they will live as long as you want them to:

YOUTUBE VIDEOS

Age group: 18 – 75 (18 – 44 make up 90%)

YouTube is you. As long as you are unique, fresh, and entertaining. Nowadays, YouTube is a really powerful platform that embraces almost all the niches in this world. And as there are a lot of representatives of your field, you have to stand out and prove that your content is much better and worthy of being viewed.

The things you can optimize on YouTube:

• Hashtags: these are needed on each platform you are going to use and optimize. Remember, hashtags should be relevant to your niche and topic:

• Video itself: it should be of the highest quality in terms of content presented and resolution. People – your potential customers – prefer enjoying nice pictures, compelling commentary and valuable data, so make sure to meet their requirements. Create playlists by topics and add each new video to the appropriate playlist, so that users may find them quickly:

• Transcript: convert your audio into text. This is very useful for users because some of them may be foreigners, or your speech may be difficult to understand. And this works well for SEO. By doing transcripts for your videos, you help Google crawl and index it. Speak with keywords and then transcribe your words. Help Google show your video as an answer to a searcher’s query.

• Translation: if you own or work for an international company, do not be lazy: translate your video into some of the most widespread languages. A wider audience will have the opportunity to understand you and learn more about your product. This will help you to get the highest search result positions in different locations.

And a live video:

• Basic info: here you are limited to 5000 characters. The description box is really useful, so exploit it undoubtedly! What you can type there:

1. Keywords in title, description itself, and tags:

2. Place links to your website and other social media platforms accounts;

3. Links to materials you used for a video;

4. Notes about important events related to your brand;

5. A brief script of your video with the times you mention certain things – people like this a lot;

YouTube has a lot you can optimize.

Make time to care about each of the underlined points below. These will help you get more value out of using YouTube and feature higher on YouTube search:

People like to leave comments on YouTube, whether they are bad or good ones. Be polite with everybody because it helps to increase the level of engagement and shows that everybody is respected at your place.

Do you know that YouTube is the second most popular search engine after Google? According to Global Media Insight, YouTube has more than 2.7 billion active users. If we can’t find what we want on Google, we will jump to YouTube and find it there.

WebCEO understands the importance of YouTube and other platforms in contemporary 2020+ SEO and tries to embrace all the channels you can potentially get some traffic from and optimize your content for. In the WebCEO Rank Tracker Tool, you can easily monitor your YouTube performance with a few clicks, adding it to a list of search engines you can work with. After a fresh scan, you will be able to enjoy a full report regarding your keyword performance on YouTube.

Check your YouTube rankings with WebCEO Sign Up Free

LINKEDIN POSTS

Age group: 18 – 49

LinkedIn is all about being official. Here you present and sell your professionalism. Time to humblebrag and describe why you are a great specialist or why your company is worthy of attention. Don’t be shy!

After filling out the forms regarding your experience and achievements, it will be time to learn how to optimize your posts. If you use a company account, some features of the ordinary posts are not available, for example articles.

Since LinkedIn is more official than other social media platforms you have to present your content thoughtfully. Work on the presentation of your idea a lot, let it be professional, of high quality, and structured so your readers will be compelled to join the conversation and express their opinion regarding a chosen topic. Ask interesting and intriguing questions, challenge readers to take part in your considerations and let them prove whether you are right or wrong. This will bring more engagement. 

You can make your post fully optimized by following the next tips:

• Keywords should be everywhere! Hashtags in your posts make them visible to the users, even if they are not your followers or aren’t connected to you.

• Photos and videos make posts brighter and attract more attention to your content. Be sure to add alt text to your images for better accessibility.

• Articles: this feature lets you share your knowledge with the others and proving that you are indeed a professional in your niche.   

• Share a document: If you have a guide, a PowerPoint presentation or another valuable piece of content, you can easily share it and let the search engines index its content. People will come to you more often knowing you can provide them with well written and useful material. If you don’t want everybody to see and examine your material, you can easily set a limited access to the post;

• Access: in a box under your photo, you have the Access feature. You can decide on who can see the post you are going to publish. If you want to attract as many people as you can, choose “Anyone + Twitter” option, and your post will emerge on your Twitter account as well. 

Make sure you haven’t blocked the comments section and people are able to leave some words regarding your content!

A little BONUS

SlideShare

If you have a lot of in-demand and in-depth content, like presentations, documents, infographics, try SlideShare. It is owned by LinkedIn’s hosting service and is an easy way to spread your content and bring some attention. On SlideShare such features as likes and shares are also available. You can insert links leading to your social media platforms on a SlideShare profile, so people will know where to find you.

PINTEREST PINS

Age group: 18 – 49

Pinterest is all about images. How can this platform be useful for product promotion? All images are supplied with links to their original websites and short descriptions.

Pinterest is a little bit easier than other platforms in terms of content presentation. Let’s dive into it without further ado:

• Images: choose an awesome photo relevant to your business niche, bright and of high quality, and catchy enough for an ordinary user to notice it. Actually, this is the most important part you have to do on Pinterest. Be careful with photos and don’t steal them from other people!
• Title: it’s more than just the name of your image. Write anything you want (relevant to your content of course) to present your image and article to the audience in the most interesting way. The title is also a place for keywords with the help of which people will find your pin.

• Links: there are two places where your links are visible:
  • in the image as you hover a cursor over it, and
  • under the image:

• Description: here you have 500 characters to present your content (be creative!) and interest viewers to learn more. Don’t forget to put keywords in this box.
• Boards are similar to playlists on YouTube with pins replacing videos. This is really useful for followers and beneficial for you because people may observe more of your older pins, which are related to a newer one.

Track Pinterest likes and shares of images on your site with WebCEO Sign Up Free

Step #3: When to Post on Social Media?

[ Choose the right time for your posts ]

Scheduling posts is also an important part of the whole optimization process. A lot of specialists compose their posts in advance, working on each word and preparing respectable material. With a feature for post scheduling, such as on Facebook and YouTube, this process becomes significantly easier.

You can determine the best time for your business to post on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other platforms after reading some articles on this topic.

Why don’t we just tell you what are the best times to post?

The audience isn’t the same everywhere. What may be a great time for one type of audience could be the worst variant for another. Everything depends on your products, your target audience, and its location. Time Zones are obviously extremely important for your performance on social media.

How to find the best time periods for posting?

Trial and error.

Do you remember those words about starting your social media optimization long before the specific campaign you are about to run? This time can be devoted to experiments and gathering statistics. This will help you to determine your audience’s “chill out time”: the time when they are best able to soak in your material. You will learn what times during the day are the “busiest” and the “freest”: when readers enjoy your posts to the fullest and when they just miss them. Besides, at the same time, you can track other types of vital statistics: age and location of the readers.

The frequency of posting: specialists have come to the conclusion that it is better to post more than once a day. However, do not create a huge wave of posts; otherwise you will annoy your readers. 3-4 posts per day are enough to stay visible.

Shares also count and should also be optimized. If you repost something, express your opinion. People follow you for your thoughts and ideas, so even when you repost and share others’ material, your added comment should reflect you.

Twitter, of course, is in a league of its own. On this platform, less is more, and people can express their opinion even in three words. However, it’s okay to be more talkative on Twitter if it’s about your industry.

IN CONCLUSION, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn and others have become increasingly significant avenues for your content promotion. Experience and hard work matter. If you start a campaign on your own, you will quickly pick up the essentials, improve your skills and work on your social media professionally.

The WebCEO Keyword Research Tool will help you choose the right keywords for your posts and stories so that you will be seen by the right audience!

TO BE CONTINUED…

The post A Step by Step Guide to Social Media Optimization, Part 2 appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Part I: Let’s Conduct Some Research

Social media has taken control of our lives. A large number of Internet users nowadays can’t imagine living without chilling out on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Statistics says that:

• Over 62% of the worldwide population use social media;
• The average time for chilling out on social media is about 2:22 hours per day;
• 71% of customers are satisfied with purchasing goods via social media and would recommend a company or a brand to their closest people.

These are the aspects that make social media platforms an extremely profitable field for promoting products, brands, or services.

Using Social media for business these days is indispensable. Even if you already run a successful website on the Internet, you should still raise awareness about your existence on social media platforms. Your activity there greatly affects your site rankings and can often deliver 25% of your overall traffic.

The problem is how to do this properly. How do you optimize your social media and get more revenue?

Social media isn’t about a single funny post on your profile which, you may suppose, will instantly attract an enormous and interested audience for your content. Let’s be honest: it happens, but it’s the exception rather than the rule. Social media business posts will need to be in the hundreds, if not thousands, and the process consists of: work, strategy, and proper organization.

Social media users have become more capricious and used to various types of content presentation. You will have to devote a lot of effort and spend a lot of time to bring something new and amusing to the public, keep your current and future audiences on your side, and leave your competitors far behind.

And we can’t discuss post optimization without mentioning social media optimization in general. Your posts will shine bright only if you prepare a field for them, a place for growing and living. Don’t wait for fruit to sprout without any effort.

There are several steps you will have to take to make your social media accounts relevant, profitable, and popular.

LET’S CONDUCT SOME RESEARCH!

Step #1: What Is Important to Know About Working on Social Media

[ Prepare your team for hard work ]

91% of small businesses use social media to promote their business.

Social media platforms need the kind of attention you will pay to your own website. Experienced social media marketers can name hundreds of reasons why people should use social media for promoting their goods. We are going to save you time and present only the most essential reasons:

1. Nothing will give your brand a more powerful advertisement and a greater boost than social media.

Your brand’s popularity may rise dramatically in a matter of seconds with a proper marketing campaign. It’s a fact that social networks help attract new consumers, increase authority, and bring trust to your goods, brand and company.

2. You will get the opportunity to widen the circle of your customers.

Social media is undergoing constant development. Developers try to make these platforms the most convenient places not only for leisure, but also for business. By drawing people in day and night, many of your targeted followers will be around at any time to see something you post. Your products will be shown directly to this targeted segment of purchasers.

3. Your brand/company will become recognizable due to constant online visibility.

Social media platforms are awesome venues on which to conduct marketing campaigns, because they leave a record. Posts, shares, reposts – everything stays visible on profiles until a user deletes something. It allows people to take a close look at what your company was in the past and is now. Help potential customers learn about you and get a lot of benefit.

4. Managing social media, you will open a communication channel with your audience.

A modern and mobile-friendly website does not always equal a comfortable place for users to be active in the comments section. On the other hand, social media is designed perfectly for this, and that is why people do not hesitate to readily leave their feedback, like your posts and share them. The greatest thing is that you will be alarmed instantly if there are any actions to take and you can reply to them at any moment, even start a conversation in private messages. Followers appreciate it when their opinion is noticed and considered important.

After analyzing the benefits of social media marketing and how crucial it is, IT’S TIME TO GET TO WORK. Maintaining social media accounts is no easy task!

1. Be ready to work hard and spend a lot of time on brainstorming. Your team should always be aware of the latest trends, people’s interests, and know how to present content on any given platform.

2. Before starting the process of optimization, set specific goals to be achieved. This brings extra motivation and lights the path for you to follow and complete the task.

3. Develop a successful social media strategy. At this stage you should analyze and use your competitors!

Identify your rivals with WebCEO’s Rank Tracking Tool. Click on the Dangerous Competitors tab and enjoy the detailed report. Learn who you are going to compete with, who the most alarming ones are, and eventually get the better of them with the next step.

4. Track your competitors’ social media accounts. Here your real journey starts. Study the history of their posts from top to bottom, the level of engagement and what were and are the reasons of their success. An important task in this phase is to go through their feedback and – especially – complaints. Take this into account while developing your own strategy to avoid any mistakes and stand out decently.

5. BEFORE starting your social media campaign, work on your website optimization. Needless to say that SMO (Social Media Optimization) is a great way to promote your business, however, the SMO and SEO cooperation will bring you more value. Through social media, people get acquainted with your products and even purchase them, but your website is the place where they really start trusting you.

Your site architecture, appearance, content, and other components of on and off page SEO matter a lot because first impressions matter. Make your website as attractive as your social media accounts.

Social Media matters. So does SEO. Take care of your site's SEO with WebCEO. Sign Up Free

Step #2: Where to Run Your Social Media Marketing Campaign

[ Identify your target audience and decide on a few social media platforms ]

Before making any attempt to promote a website on social media, you will have to identify your target audience. A target audience comprises the type of people you produce your product for. They are of a specific age, nationality, location, interest, and lifestyle. Your goal is to identify all those points and use them in your campaign.

“My product is for everybody” – if only. Genuinely all-purpose and everyday goods and services are rare. Coca-Cola used to imply it was the case for them, but there are identifiable demographics who drink soda a lot more or a lot less than others. Your product is made for a certain group of people, so your marketing campaign primarily should be based on the needs of this very group.

There are a lot of ways of identifying your target audience. We’ll outline some of them:

• Analyze your current audience. Gather data regarding you current followers and website subscribers. Knowing who is interested in your products at the moment, you can see right from the beginning who are among those you are going to work for in the future. Their interests and hobbies will help you decide on the direction and theme of your campaign. Google Analytics will help a lot with this:  

• Analyze your competitors’ current audiences. Your competitors promote goods that have similarities with yours, so you will have roughly the same circle of customers. Your task is to learn who is interested in their goods and yours besides the group of people you outlined from your current audience.
• Online Polls and Surveys are easy and fast ways to determine who would buy your goods. You can conduct them on your website, some other websites for a fee, and of course on social media platforms with appropriate hashtags.
• Analyze your own product. You should have determined your target audience at the stage of creating your product. Now think about people who may be interested in this besides those you originally considered. Learn who else may get any benefit from your product.
• Create a persona for your target audience: a general portrait of your target audience presented schematically as a person with a set of characteristics. It will be easier to work on your strategy when you have such a useful picture of potential clients. Here is an example:

After identifying your target audience, it’s high time to choose a platform that fits your campaign the most. However, our advice is to USE ALL AVAILABLE PLATFORMS. More likely than not, your customers spend their time on more than just one platform, and so should you.

Step #3: How to Optimize Your Social Media Profiles?

[ Make sure your social media account is ready to be popular ]

Most businesses maintain between 4 and 10 social profiles.

Social media profile creation is not a big deal: the two main components you have to work on are appearance (well-prepared posts) and optimized profiles. But you can’t start your marketing campaign until you have covered the following checklist:

1. Logo and cover image.

The first thing we do as soon as we enter any website is to look at its architecture and appearance. We look for colors and build a certain picture in our minds. Learning the content comes only after.

Optimize your social media profiles to make them easy on people’s eyes – bright and modern. And most importantly, use your own images! Never use stock photos in your profile nor any of your posts. Spend some time to take your own pictures or design your own cartoons, so people will recognize your style everywhere.

2. Business name.

People should know who owns the page, so place your company’s official name for people to know who they have met.

3. Bio or “About” information.

Present information about your company in a short, yet appealing way. List the essential information with your most important keywords and go to the next step.

4. Niche.

On some social media, you can mention the category (niche) your company performs in. If your company is not popular enough yet, don’t miss this part! Even world-renowned companies like Coca-Cola or Starbucks specify their sphere of activity, so why shouldn’t you? Of course, on some platforms, selecting a category is mandatory.

5. Links to a website and other social media platforms.

Always place a link to your website on your social media accounts! All your marketing goals in social media involve people visiting your website (although some businesses only need to have people call their phone number). After all, most of the information about your company and a full list of your products are on your website.

Some platforms allow you to insert links and even have special boxes for them. Use this chance for sure! Everything is for your followers’ convenience.

5. Make it easy to reach you.

Followers and potential customers will appreciate the option to ask a direct question or write some feedback privately. Make it possible and don’t worry about spammers, you can block them if need be.

Moreover, via non-public messages, you can receive a profitable offer from another company, or a good idea from an interested follower. LinkedIn messaging can produce more business for a company than email itself. Always check your social media inboxes.

6. Take your time to prepare.

If you are planning to start a social media marketing campaign in the future, begin the process of optimization at least a few months beforehand. Start making posts, uploading videos and images in order to gather relevant followers and test the waters of audience reaction to your product.

For instance, on Twitter you should have spent a few months following relevant people, unfollowing those who did not follow back and following more relevant people. Be sure to follow/invite those in your database if you have one.

Take a good look at the screenshots below to learn what social media profile optimization entails:

• Facebook:

• Twitter:

• Instagram:

• YouTube:

• LinkedIn:

• Pinterest:

Summary

If you want to join social media and start promoting your business, only wanting is not enough. First and foremost, social media optimization needs YOU: your time, your creativity, your contribution.

You should begin with research and planning. If you want to create a powerful and pleasing place for visitors, you will have to put yourself into data searching and processing. An accurate examination of your business possibilities on social media platforms and your competitors will clear the road to success.  

Proceed with identifying and analyzing your audience. The right people attracted to the right places in the best case scenario will bring you traffic, recognition and customers. When we are talking about Internet use, there are two places where we all party hard most of the time: on websites we like and on social media. Use these two. Become that very liked website lots of traffic after getting loved on social media. These are two components of your strategy.

And finally: optimize your profiles and then go right to the next step: writing a post on social media.

Start your research with the WebCEO Rank Tracking Tool by identifying and analyzing your competitors!

Find your most Dangerous Competitors Sign Up Free

TO BE CONTINUED…

The post A Step by Step Guide to Social Media Optimization. Part 1 appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.