The Importance of Building Your Brand on Social Media for SEO

There is a lot more to SEO than making sure a website is user-friendly and contains suitable keywords. One aspect that often gets overlooked is the importance of social media when it comes to creating a widely recognised brand.

Social Media Sites as Search Engines

Consider this: every social media platform is like a self-contained search engine on its own, with an incredibly high engagement rate. Millions of people use Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat every single day to follow, like and share content from brands. While these actions in themselves may not directly correspond with better Google results rankings, they are incredibly valuable for increasing your website’s popularity. As you might expect, this almost invariably leads to a growth in visitor traffic and hence benefits SEO. Therefore focusing on creating and posting good social media content creates a virtuous cycle. The bigger your following gets, the faster it will grow – provided your posts remain interesting and high quality.

Now you might be thinking: what exactly does “good” social media content consist of? Well, to start off with, it always prioritises quality over quantity. In this way, it is unlike blogging, where you can get away with writing a lot of fairly similar articles all focused on the same set of related keywords. Social media is full of innovative content creators that are constantly changing up their style and finding new ways to keep followers interested.

User Engagement

To compete with these other brand initiatives, you need to place the emphasis on creativity and understanding what your target audience enjoys seeing on their feeds. It is also hugely important to make sure that all the content posted on a brand page is fully reflective of the brand’s image, values and aesthetic. It also has to be compelling; the best posts often contain a “call to action”. For instance, you could highlight a problem that followers are likely to have, and then concisely explain how your website or product provides a solution. Then, a discount code to your online shop is a lot more attractive to prospective buyers. Encourage responses from viewers by using phrases such as “like if you agree” or “tag someone who would relate”. Some of the most popular types of content include Instagram giveaways, curated or themed posts and influencer brand deals.

Influencers

This leads us to one of the other major advantages of using social media to build a brand – influencers. These are personalities that have built a large following on one or more social media platforms, and boast a high rate of engagement. While the legitimacy of some so-called influencers has been questioned on occasion, there are still a large proportion of social media “stars” that do genuinely draw a great deal of interest towards the brands that they represent. Brand deals may consist of posts, Instagram stories or YouTube videos that promote your products or services. This is usually done in exchange for fees, free products or other perks. These campaigns can be extremely successful as long as you select the right person to represent your brand image. This means that their projected values and content should align with those of your brand.

Build Relationships & Grow

Finally, social media provides a great avenue to make connections with other potential business partners or investors. Integrating external links to your sites allows them to see what you are about, without you even getting in contact with them directly. One great way to do this is by purchasing ads on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. This has the added benefit of widening your exposure to individuals that are in your target market but are not yet aware of your brand. It provides a direct outbound link to your site, making this possibly one of the best social media strategies for directly improving SEO.

Get in Touch with Cyber Sushi Design

Hopefully, this article has convinced you of just how invaluable social media can be for spreading awareness of your brand, and in turn improving your search engine rankings. Have you tried any of the strategies we recommend? If so, tell us about your experience in an email we always love to hear from our readers.