Confirmed – Social Media has Major Impact on Local Business Search Engine Marketing

We’ve been clear that social media has an impact on local business search engine marketing for some time now, but with social media still being a relatively new marketing tool in its infancy, how much of an impact it’s had in total for businesses has been a bit unclear… until now.

MarketingSherpa, an external research firm and publisher of marketing know-how, recently released and presented the results of their Search Marketing Benchmark Report that included 2200 survey respondents and reviewed best practices to improve search and social media marketing integration. The key finding of the survey per the Company is “search and social media have incredible synergy”.

The survey showed that 64% of the organizations surveyed do indeed integrate social media with search engine marketing, with those organizations in the strategic phases being much more likely to integrate the two. Also, the report indicates that social impacts organic search performance where “search marketers who integrate social media achieve a 59% better rate of conversion”. This is far from insignificant. In fact, it’s quite significant. By integrating social with search, it:

-Provides a means to produce and facilitate more relevant content that’s search engine friendly.

-Gives a means for creating a solid brand with expert status and authority that helps build customer loyalty and perceived business credibility.

-Allows for more traffic via inbound links to a local business website.

-Increases the business’ number of search engine listings.

Now that we have more solid concrete evidence as to how much of an impact social has on search, how can a local business implement a strong social media campaign? Important elements include:

The right content.
Hire a writer or use one of our Social Marketing Media Management services if you need to, but be sure to keep your content fresh, new and relevant to your local business target audience.

Keyword focus.
Be sure to incorporate your SEO keyword strategy into your social media campaign, being mindful of using them as naturally as possible to keep readers engaged.

Consistency in motion.
Blog and microblog on a regular basis to keep this information coming for your audience, and to continue to build your links and search engine friendly content.

Complete profiles and pages.
To successfully build a brand image that states authority, be sure your profile pages, be it FaceBook, Twitter, and so on, are very professional, brand relevant, complete and accurate to support your local business.

Utilize synergy between social media venues.
Take advantage of the synergies available between all of your social media campaigns to boost your inbound links. Post your blog links on all of your social media sites, for example, use your Facebook link in your email campaigns and email signatures, and so on.

If you’re not currently set up on at least Facebook and Twitter, get your local business page set up yesterday so you can be in with the majority of businesses who see results from the social and search strategic integrations vs. the minority who don’t integrate the two.

-Chris Marentis

Ask us about Social Marketing Media Management services available by Reformation Productions.