With the realm of what I call Social Search coming closer and closer, it is even more important for websites to integrate and use social platforms. With the post from Bill Slawski (here) about Google’s patent filing it becomes more and more important not just to stop at normal SEO practices of optimizing a website.
No I know I am not the first to say any of this, but there are still way to many SEO professionals and companies that do not take enough care to build social connectivity and strategies.
You need to lead people from your website to your social spheres and vice versa and off-course engage them, connect and build stronger relationships. Now not every company needs or can afford Social Listening Stations such as Dell & Gatorade has, but it is not that difficult to build your own little social listening app, or use iGoogle as can be seen here to listen to the social conversation.
Last week I spoke to two individuals from different companies about why their companies have no social interaction, strategy or presence (well almost, a twitter account with 20 followers doesn’t count). Both gave me more or less the same answer: They cannot control what people write and/or share about them online. Now how is that for an excuse! Off course you cant! But if you are thinking like this, you are totally missing the plot. That is where the interacting comes in, and why you need to be socially active and present.
Now let me explain, if someone has something bad to say about your company, and you are not represented in that social sphere you will never know, and you can’t ever do anything to fix and/or address the situation. If you however are on the social platform a client or customer is far more likely to vent their frustrations at you, because they want you to know how your company stuffed up, or how they got the short straw. Yes all their friend and/or followers will see it, but SO WILL YOU!
This puts the ball in your court, the power in your hands! This allows you the opportunity to act and be interactive and show that your company actually gives a crap, and wants to help.
See, its kinda better to be there and be active, than sticking your head in the sand!
Now back to search and Google* and all that, the next iteration of search engines will encompass and include all your likes and +1, your tweets and link sharing. So apart from being in control of your brand socially, being socially connected will bring you higher search engine listings (if not already so), engage customers and consumers more and allow for the building of relationships them.
So what does all this Social Connectivity and interaction mean then?
- Improved brand awareness
- Improved brand perception
- Improved search results listings
- Improved customer relationships
- Improved repeat business
So is your company doing what it can to be socially connected?
*Just a side note, but for the life of me I cannot think why Facebook or Facebook & Bing haven’t capitalized on Open Graph and Likes. They can build such a kick ass search engine using all the normal tips and tricks, and totally super size it with all the social content!?
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