A good way (but by no means the only way) to increase your SEO rankings is by having your content shared a lot socially. This says to the search engines that people are interested and willing to tell other people about it. How to do this though? Writing excellent, unique and high-quality content is a start, but then you’ll be sitting around just hoping it might catch on on Twitter or elsewhere. A much more efficient way is to take control of your social media so that when you post something, it already has an eager audience
Building up followers on Twitter can be a slow burner. Many try to speed up the process by adding thousands of people and hoping for followbacks. This is not the way to go. First of all it’s obvious to people when they look at your account and will make your company look desperate. Secondly, you want people to follow you because they find you interesting, not because of some internet version of politeness.
There’s two things you can really do to gain followers. That is to post decent and helpful content, which can either be your own or someone else’s. Don’t see your Twitter account solely as a place to showcase yourself, it’s a place to get involved with a community. If you find an interesting article, pass it on and people will see you as a place to get great information.
It’s also important to engage as well. Make yourself human and get involved with conversations. Seek out influencers and discuss the latest developments and ideas within your field. Show off your expertise and people will come to you. Slowly, you’ll find that as your follower count grows, the rate you gain new ones will increase as you’re more likely to be retweeted or included in conversation automatically.
In terms of seeking people out, Facebook is a lot less proactive than Twitter. You need people to come to you, so make sure your Facebook page is advertised clearly on your site (and feel free to plug it every so often on your Twitter as well). A good way to bring people in is to offer unique things on your Facebook page. The best option for this are some simple competitions. A nice one to do, that the frozen yogurt company Lick do, is to get customers to post a picture of themselves with your product. You pick the best and give them a prize. Piece of cake and it gets people on your page.
You also need to keep them there though and again, like Twitter, you need to do more than just advertise yourself over and over. Engage with people with polls, discussions and, like Twitter, with interesting information. Make your page either useful, entertaining or both to keep people coming back.
LinkedIn/Google+
These two aren’t as useful as the others, but there’s still no need to neglect them. They both work in similar ways really. The best bet is to find relevant groups for the content you create and get involved. Talk with other people, swap ideas and get join discussions. People in these kinds of places will be more willing to take what you have to say seriously if you don’t just use it as a dumping ground for your own articles.
So, there you have it. Get out there, get involved and contribute. Put the proper work and care in, and you’ll reap the rewards.
Joshua Danton Boyd is a an expert on online accounting and regularly contributes to Freelance Advisor.
