Expert SEO Technique: Social Media Engagement

Social media has gone from an inexplicable phenom to a mass-popularity buzzword to a more-or-less everyday part of the SEO skillset…all in just under 4 years. If you think that’s a short timeframe, though, you’re not particularly used to the SEO world — heck, we invented, killed, resurrected, and reinvented guest blogging over the course of about 18 months. Social media (ab)use, however, is definitely turning out to be a long-term tool in the toolbelt; something that eventually, everyone is going to have to know at least a little bit about.

How to Find Influencers

The first step in engaging social media is to define a group of influencers that can help you expand your business. Influencers are defined by three factors:

• Relevance: They must be talking about things that are relevant to your business.
• Reach: They must have a lot of followers.
• Resonance: They must be saying things that jive with your business’ philosophy and purpose. (i.e. if you’re selling supplements, you don’t want an influencer who is promoting a supplement-free lifestyle, even if their general subject matter — say, raw-food nutrition — matches yours.)

Search Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and other social media havens for people who are producing content about your industry. If you find someone who is relevant, has reach, and resonates with your core message, you’re in luck! Time to initiate a relationship.

Build Rapport

Start by finding content of theirs that you truly like, and comment on it. Wait a day or two, and then write an intelligent response — critical or complimentary doesn’t matter, as long as it shows that you truly paid attention and cared about the content. If you find that, in the next week or two, they’re putting on a Twitter chat or a webinar or some other sort of interactive event, attend and introduce yourself.

The key here is to show them that you have value that they can take advantage of. The more value you can provide them, the more likely they are to respond positively when you ask them for some value in return. Like everything an expert SEO person does, the key here is investing your effort repeatedly over time to achieve phenomenal results — and this totally can if you give it your undivided attention for just a few minutes each day.