Denver SEO Guru

Social Media Suspension?

What would happen if you relied on Twitter for communication with your customers and you suddenly got shut down? This scenario has happened to some high profile companies who, out of the blue, at no fault of their own were shut off with clients and business partners because of a mistake or arbitrary suspension by a social media company.

Regardless of whether it’s YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, your business is subject to the whims of the owners of those social media channels and their rules. Even though it isn’t usually a problem, it’s wise to plan for unexpected consequences of the changing rules and control these companies have. Your emails to their support departments most likely will be going into a black hole, at least for awhile before you can figure out what to do to get your account back online.

The main problem comes from the loss of contact you have with customers and prospects that were developed through these social media channels. How do you recover your customer lists? How do you protect yourself from this possibility?

Highlight Your Brand and Main Website

Be sure when building and using social media properties to support your business you always emphasize your brand through links to your primary websites. The benefit is two-fold: you build your company web brand and you provide a visible method for alternative and continued communication with your business. Having 5,000 fans on Facebook won’t do you much good if your account gets shut down, even if only temporary, unless those same “fans” have had a reason to visit your business website previously and know where you find you if something does happen.

Building an email list from your social media website visitors is one of the best ways to ensure that you maintain contact with your audience and the best way to do that is to provide an incentive on your website through an opt-in process and free offer. Social media is excellent for enhancing and building rapport and communicating with prospective and existing customers, but primarily has an enhancement to your existing core business marketing systems. These marketing systems include web properties that you control, i.e., your main website and list building mechanisms.

Use Multiple Social Media Channels

It seems obvious, but many companies focus all of their social media efforts on just one channel, for example, Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. Although, not every platform is appropriate for every business, depending on just one leaves you vulnerable. If your Twitter account gets shut down, you’ll still have your company blog or YouTube channel to communicate current news and information.

Another strategy is to continually maintain a backup or method for capturing the visitors to your social media properties just as you backup your website and personal computers. When not possible, at least identify those thought leaders in your market who communicate to their own fan base so in the case of unforeseen problems, you can continue your contact with them and thereby reach your larger market.

Follow the Rules of Social Media Engagement

Be sure you understand the Terms and Conditions for these sites. You may find yourself doing something that makes total sense to your, but actually violates a key rule of engagement/guidelines for the social media site. For example, Facebook allows commercialization on a business account, but not on your personal fan page.

Even more scary, is that you may get banned or suspended even for associating with someone or an organization that is spamming or using other tactics in violation of the social site’s guidelines. You may not even know you’re doing it, but in most cases, when you find yourself asking whether or not someone is doing seems questionable, stay away or you may regret it later.

Author Steve Josephs is owner of Intellidon Marketing LLC, a Search Engine Marketing and Seo Services firm specializing in attracting new customers for local businesses through Online Marketing Strategies. See Wikipedia definition of Search Engine Optimization.

Relationship Building

Sites such as Facebook and Twitter are getting a huge amount of visibility when it comes to building relationships with customers, especially in consumer oriented businesses. On the positive site, social media sites are often successfully used to enhance customer interactions, glean market information and consumer trends.

But, for many types of businesses, prospective customers just aren’t online discussing the latest plumbing service or talking about their interest in pest control. In addition, many business to business companies are finding that consumer style social media can be perceived as unprofessional and decrease their brand image. These BtoB companies need to take these challenges into account when leveraging social media as a part of their marketing strategy.

Increased Awareness

Social media sites allow you to create a presence that’s more personal than the typical corporate image, which can create a more positive affinity to the business. Posting pictures, links to blog posts and commenting on current news about your company can raise awareness of your company’s brand.

For example, if you have a health and fitness business, posting photos of actual customers using the facility or providing videos of interviews with customers about their experiences at the gym can create instant rapport with prospective customers. Creating personalities around your key personnel, trainers, etc. can create an atmosphere where prospects feel they already know the people before even setting foot in the door.

Social media provides opportunities to lead people through an educational process without using a pushy, sales-oriented approach. You can create links to interesting articles in your profile or blog comments on your Facebook profile that leads an interested person through a sales funnel that includes education, interaction and a series of follow up communications via an email auto-responder sequence that include various offers and calls-to-action.

Engagement

 The “new” aspect of social media is really the increase in engagement that it creates with prospects and customers in ways that were either non-existent or at the most very weak. In this way, potential customers are becoming more and more aware of businesses even before ever doing a search online.

Understanding your prospect universe becomes key to engaging your prospective audience. If your specific audience “hang out” on certain web properties, you better find out where that is and then insert yourself in a non-business manner. This means getting involved in the conversation and engaging in a way that doesn’t dominate the conversation as we normally do with aggressive traditional marketing and advertising techniques. 

But… you first need to become “findable” online. Through press releases or blog posting, Seo properties and other means, your customers need to find a reason to visit your social media profile.

Authority Branding

Creating credibility in your market is key to getting visibility within social media communities. Once identified as an expert and high-value resource in your field of business, you’ll begin to get referenced and links within your social media posts will be clicked, driving more and more people to your main money site (corporate website).

Publishing is one of the best ways to take advantage of this opportunity. As “content” is the key ingredient and core of Internet real estate, the more you publish content and get visible online, the more people will find you and want to engage with your information and your company.

To become one of “the” experts in your market niche, you don’t necessarily have to be the originator of the information. Experts are often those “in the know” and become the go-to resource when someone is looking to find out about a particular subject. Many of the information you publish and comment on can be just the latest thoughts, trends or knowledge about your industry.

Social Proof

Building your trustworthiness or credibility within your market can be supported and enhanced through social media engagement. The primary ways to do this is to get actual customers commenting on your Facebook or blogs, thereby providing the “social proof” as to the credibility of your company’s value.

Linking these customer comments to even more detailed testimonials and case studies on your website will build this social proof and credibility for your business even more.

Author Steve Josephs is owner of Intellidon Marketing LLC, a Search Engine Marketing and SEO Services firm specializing in attracting new customers for local businesses through Online Marketing Strategies. Wikipedia on Search Engine Optimization.

Have you ever wondered about the benefit of using social media on social networks and whether or not the time spent is worth it? If you’re doing it to improve your Search Engine Optimization, you’re not alone.

Basically, social networks are websites or web facilities that allow people to share their individuality and interests with people of similar interest through personal profiles, blog posting, photo and video sharing, as well as interact with one another online. These online facilities include Profiles, Friends, Groups, Discussions, Blogs and Widgets.

Two of the most important of these social networks are YouTube and Metacafe which utilize videos as their main communication method. If you’re anything like me, you probably shy away from video as you are not very interested in putting yourself out there on film for everyone to see.

That being said, you don’t have to be on video to use video, and you don’t even have to use film to create a video… At least for the most part. The truth is that you’ll need some kind of symbol, avatar or other identity for people to get familiar with.

Personalization that builds a relationship of trust is the key to social media for businesses.

Customer loyalty built out of that trust relationship positions you as an authority in your field and gives you permission to ramp up the communication with your customers, who, more and more will become loyal customers who will buy from you over and over again as a result of increased interest in you, your website and the products or services that you offer.

Back to YouTube and Metacafe… These two sites make it very easy to take part in their huge visibility on the web, but the trick is how to leverage that visibility to your advantage.

YouTube.com

Take YouTube which has an Alexa rank of 3 worldwide (meaning it’s the 3^rd most visited site) and a Google PageRank score of 9 (out of 10). It’s not usually this easy to piggy back on those kinds of stats to the benefit of your business, but with YouTube it is.

Your first step is to sign up and create a “Channel” which becomes your main page under which you’ll add all of your other videos and build status for your brand. As people become familiar with your published video content, they can choose to subscribe to your channel so they don’t miss any future videos that you upload over time. In addition, you have options to send out bulletins to those subscribers from time to time.

The Seo benefit of back links to your website.

The “home page” for your channel provides opportunity for your to advertise who you and your business is, as well as create a link back to your main website. You can also add additional links in the description field of every video that you add to boost your Internet Marketing efforts.

The value of high quality relevant SEO back links from YouTube can’t be underestimated. One way back links from high PR websites like YouTube (PR 9) can contribute a lot of link juice to boost your site’s search engine rankings.

Metacafe.com

There is a difference between Metacafe and YouTube, and it’s significant. While YouTube is wide open, but appeals to niche markets, Metacafe is wide open. Even so, Metacafe has moderators who filter out non-entertainment videos that they feel may not be the quality or type they feel will appeal to a broad based audience. These volunteer reviewers are a core part of the culture of Metacafe as are the viewers who then rate the videos themselves.

The good news is that similar to YouTube, Metacafe also provides Profiles, Links and promotional opportunities.

What is Good and Acceptable Content?

First, videos on YouTube must be kept under ten minutes and on Metacafe must be somewhere around a minute and a half since they like quick blasts rather than longer discourses.

One way to take advantage of user searches is to create your video as a “How To” video. Large numbers of people search the web constantly looking for information about how to do something. In fact, just about everything you can think of can be structured as an informative how to video.

Another related video is the Vlog or video blog. If you run a blog or regularly post to an industry blog, adding video can begin to create fans for your business, as well as authority status for you. The main different between these two video sites is that with Metacafe you’ll want to keep it short and fun.

If you need help with ideas, check out YouTube’s “Creator’s Corner” where you can review some of their more creative recommendations and ideas for optimizing your video for best results.

If you plan to post videos regularly to your channel, then you should constantly seek to get visitors to subscribe to your channel or visit your website where you have additional calls to action, perhaps a newsletter signup of free offer. The best method for accomplishing this is to create high value content and tell the viewer where they can get more of the same.

Non-Video Option

You can create a niche market YouTube channel that has references to the best in your niche and continually comment on related videos of others. You can offer playlists on your channel that are on topic and will definitely be of interest to your subscribers. People will appreciate the work you do in your market to consolidate information, thereby positioning you as an expert in your field.

People that I know who are successful with social networking sites are consistent in their posting activity and always on topic.

Author Steve Josephs is owner of Intellidon Marketing LLC, a Search Engine Marketing and SEO Services firm specializing in attracting new customers for local businesses through Online Marketing Strategies. See: Wikipedia on Search Engine Optimization.