The 2 Most SEO- Effective Social Media Platforms that will Boost the Traffic to your Website
Statista, the popular statistics portal issued the results of a great piece of research. It outlines the traffic and therefore influences the major social media platforms.
The report called “Most famous social network sites worldwide” ranked the top 10 social media platforms worldwide by number of active users. So the results are clear. The most effective social media platforms currently are Facebook and Youtube.
But perhaps it is a little premature to talk about effectiveness, the statistics only speak of traffic. Of course more traffic means more visitors to your channel and more engagement too, potentially. This is why you should SEO your social media channels. This is why you should SEO your social media channels.
However the most important discussion happens around, what does effective mean and how do we measure it. Consequently, are these 2 top platforms really the most effective?
Let’s look at them one by one:
Apart from being the number 1 top traffic social media site in the world, it is also obvious that facebook trumps all of them when looking at staying updated and keeping people connected.
Facebook has taken on all the different media formats that have threatened it through the rise of platforms like Periscope and Instagram. It has in fact purchased Instagram and in the process has reassured us that the team behind Facebook know what they need to do to keep people on their platform. This is a great reason to invest time in a platform. Its longevity is important when you spend a lot of time on it.
One of Facebook’s main strengths for business is probably the insights and the groups. It offers businesses great tools to reach their audience and engage. However, as more and more businesses get on facebook, advertising prices are seeing a sharp rise. The platform is indeed running out of placement space and if prices keep rising, paid advertising on Facebook will not become feasible for small businesses. This coupled with reduced visibility and reach for business pages are making Facebook less effective for businesses. Currently the average number of Page fans that actually see your posts stands at around 0.5%. If you have engaging content this can be pushed up to 6 or even 20% however if you’re just starting out, it’s a very sharp climb.
youtube
There are currently over 50 Million users creating content on Youtube. Youtube is a great platform if you are good with video. It is also a good platform to use if you want to place videos on your website. Youtube has a great tagging system. This allows you to attach words, using them like keywords on your videos. Since Youtube belongs to Google it can help your website get more visibility especially in the video results if you use Youtube.
The downside of Youtube however is that you need to create videos. Facebook is comparatively more accessible because you can use simple text posts and images or just share other people’s articles. Youtube is definitely a great platform however statistics show that 50% of its users share videos on other platforms from Youtube and therefore it doesn’t seem to be the sole platform they use. Everything points to the fact that Youtube makes a great second platform. Used alongside your website and Facebook, Youtube can be powerful. However like every other tool you have to be realistic about the budgets and time you have available in your business for social media platforms.
Different industries will benefit in different ways from these platforms. If the return on investment is worthwhile for yours it may well be worth outsourcing this and working on a plan with clear Return on Investment. If on the other hand your business does not benefit directly from being highly visible on social the in-house organic option might be preferable.
It is important to have the right combination of social media that corresponds to your industry and targeted customers. Social media is a time consuming task and it can backfire if it is not done or maintained properly.
It is not rare, that when new customers arrive at FairTech, we reduce the amount of social media content in order to fit to their human resource availability so they are able to maintain the channel used accordingly. If you have a Facebook page for example, clients will post questions, the system monitors and shows your response time publicly. Better close your page than having a response time of 2 days or more. Ideally 1h would be perfect, depending on your industry you may also be able to have a slower response time. Personally, I would not go over 1 day.
My favorite combinations, depending on your location, nature of your business, budget and time available are:
Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest; as soon you combine Twitter, it will become the glue between all of them.
Ask now for your free consultation to learn about your options and help you put a well-suited budget together.
