With recent changes Facebook has made, renegotiation of the Google-Twitter contract, and Google’s announcement that it does not include social signals in its ranking algorithm, business owners and SEO’s are struggling to find where social media fits into a strategy for web visibility.
Although I still feel that social media still has a place in a mature business’ overall marketing plan, how to go about using social media for visibility is now drastically changing.
It used to be that having social updates posted to Twitter and Facebook was a strategy that all businesses on the web needed to embrace, now our recommendations are different based on this changed landscape.
For new businesses the validity of starting a Facebook or Twitter account with no followers and paying a writer to post updates has lost value. It is by far better for this new business to invest in AdWords and blogging for a long range content and visibility plan than to be on social media platforms.
For established mature businesses whether to post to Facebook or Twitter really now depend on the business’ community. Some firms have a vital Facebook presence and to continue to post there makes perfect sense. Additionally for these businesses to use Facebook’s options to promote posts to a wider demographic is now becoming an attractive option. For right now Twitter continues to be a smart place to be, but this may change rapidly as Google and Twitter redefine their relationship in the months ahead.
What is becoming more and more attractive than a Twitter and Facebook as a marketing strategy is activity on a personal Google+ profile tied to a rel=”author” tag with high quality content pieces and Google+ Community creation and moderation.
This next year will be strategic for how businesses use social media. I am predicting that more activity will be in Facebook promoted updates than in regular content creation and that Twitter will need to continue to reinvent itself to stay relative in this new landscape.