9 Things to STOP doing with Social Media & SEO
Social Media Marketing and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) are still relatively new forms of marketing. As a business, you can do many things that make you look great in the eyes of Google and your audience, but there are also many things businesses do that are obsolete and can make you suffer in the long run
#1 – Advertising directly to your fans or followers
If you have any kind of following on Social Media, you may want to advertise your products to them directly. This is a big “no-no”. People on social media are interested in trending and interesting content that they can have the opportunity to engage in. They’re not so interested in following links to your website and looking at products all day long. This will cause people to stop following you. Instead, give them an opportunity to sign up for a newsletter and display your product or service to them through email. This also gives your potential customer the opportunity to contact you directly, which is what we all want, right?
#2 – Worrying about your follower count
I know you may think you will seem more trustworthy, legitimate, or “cool” with a large following, but in the end, this could hurt you. If you are following tons of people on a daily basis in order to gain a following, your audience isn’t going to be people interested in your business, and they’re not going to engage in your posts. Social sites, as well as Google, analyze how many of your followers are engaging, and if the ratio is low then your content will not spread throughout social platforms. Instead, worry about engaging with the audience you already have while putting out great content and more followers will come. You can gauge when your followers are online with Facebook Developer Tools.
#3 – Buying followers
As mentioned above, you may think a larger following is going to help you in many ways. Having an audience that doesn’t engage in your content is NOT good. When you are buying followers or likes, you are just paying for bot accounts. This means that these people are not real and they will NEVER engage in your posts! You want to have real people following your page.
#4 – Improper content sharing
You should make sure you are properly linking your content from your website on your social platforms. Don’t simply post a link from an outside article you feel is relevant to your business. Optimize your posts with images, links, as well as graphs and cards. When you optimize your Social posts, not only will they be more likely to be shared by your audience, but they will also link back correctly to your website in Google’s eyes. Social Signals are great for SERPs.
#5 – Over posting
Social media is an open discussion that takes place between millions of people a day. Some businesses may think that posting about their personal life may make followers feel more personally connected to them. Definitely not. If you are doing this, please stop NOW! You can use tools like Facebook SDK developer tools for advertising and Hootsuite to really see when your audience is engaging in your posts. Don’t post 20 posts a day full of garbage. Post 1-2 posts a day with exciting and relevant content to your business.
#6 – Don’t Argue!
I cannot stress how important this is. If somebody writes a bad review of your company on your page or another social site, do not argue with them. This will make you seem petty and unintelligent. People don’t want to do business with a child, so don’t act like one. I have seen this done so many times on social sites. Instead, contact them privately and try and resolve the problem. If the problem is resolved, you can ask them to edit their review.
#6 – Do not lie to your followers
We all want to be “popular” on Social Media when it comes to business. We want people to find us before our competitors, and that’s understandable. Though this should be accomplished naturally. Do not lie to your followers or mislead them about your company in any way. If the hat gets out of the bag, you can kiss your business goodbye when it comes to doing business online. And this leads us to:
#7 – Don’t badmouth the competition
Badmouthing the competition may seem advantageous for your business. Instead, just like arguing, this will make you seem petty and archaic. Weak even. If you’re proud of your business and you stand behind your brand, there’s no reason for this.
#8 – Improper Link Building
Link building is an SEO term that means building (or gaining) links to your website from other websites around the internet. There is a proper way and an improper way of doing this. The proper way would be to find other sites, blogs, and social feeds that fit the criteria of your business. Other websites that have content relevant to the content on your website. Building links to these sites would be good. Simply buying a program to build links anywhere is BAD and Google will slap you right in the face for it.
#9 – Trying to do it yourself
If you read this article and think to yourself “What is SEO?” or “What is Social Marketing?”, then you should stop trying to market yourself or your business online. There are very intricate and technical aspects of both Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. If you don’t have the time or resources to learn proper procedures on these things, then you should start outsourcing to companies who have the background and skill to do this for you. “Dabbling” in SEO is only going to make your rankings worse. On that note, if you do have the time to learn entry-level SEO such as title tags, meta descriptions, micro data & schema, robots.txt, htaccess, and so forth then the best place to learn is your own website.
Matthew is the President of Infront Webworks and is a New England native now calling Colorado Springs home. Matt attended The University of NH where he pursued a BS in Natural Resource Economics & Business Administration. Aside from Infront; Matthew has owned and managed two other online agencies based on the seacoast of New Hampshire and been a key player in multiple technology mergers & acquisitions. When he’s not bathing in technology, online marketing & business; he’s probably spending time with his wife and daughter, boating, skiing the trees, hiking or cooking..he is a foodie for sure!
