Are You An Ostrich or a Wolf ? SEO, Social Media and the Small Business Owner
The small biz owners I talk with tend to fall into two camps with SEO and Social Media Marketing.
1) Ostrich) They don’t know what SEO is and they don’t know how to use social media to grow their biz. (Don’t feel bad, we all have to start somewhere! 🙂 )
2) Wolves—They’re gobbling up information from dozens of sources.
They know they need SEO to get found by Google and they know they need social media to build relationships. Yet, they talk about them in the same sentence as if they’re the same thing—they’re not.
Related but different.
Ok, let’s break these down.
Good SEO Will Set Your Site Up for Success
SEO stands for search engine optimization.
It’s the foundation for getting found by the search engines. It starts with keyword research. I could talk for hours on the subject so I’ll spare you the gory details. Let’s just say if you don’t know what I’m talking about and you don’t have a team of experts working on your website—well, you probably aren’t getting the web traffic (and customers) that you could.
There are multiple moving parts to SEO—backlinks, anchor texts, meta tags–subjects for other blog posts. But it all starts with good keyword research and analysis.
Social Media is Different
Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, etc. can send traffic to your website. They can also provide you important backlinks (part of SEO strategy) which will boost your rankings.
This alone is an excellent recent to get on board with your social media marketing.
Build Trust
The other reason is it’s a great way to build relationships with your customers.
If that’s sounds “funny” to you think of the old salesman’s adage—“people do business with people they know, like and trust.” Do you go to a new hairdresser every time you need a trim or have you had the same one for years?
Do you do business with the financial advisor you’ve met over and over at networking meetings and community events and gotten to know over the years? Or do you prefer to go to a stranger when you need financial advising?
Think of it like this, if your website is your 24-hour sales team, Facebook is your company’s open house.
You can meet people there for the first time and invite them to your website. You can start a conversation on Facebook that leads to a phone call that leads to a new client. It’s happened to me. It can happen to you. But, not without a plan.
SEO and Social media are related but different. They both play a role in your online presence and they both require a plan.
If you’d like to get the hang of how to use social media in your business, I have aspecial program I’ve developed just for busy business owners like you.
Jen Phillips April loves helping business owners get clear on using social media for their businesses. She also loves writing webpages that get found by Google and bring you more business. 🙂 267-265-7291.
