Dodgeball Marketing Podcast #47: SEO Basics: How Should I Use Social Media in My Online Marketing?

Michael Utley: Hey, welcome to the Dodgeball Marketing Podcast. I'm Michael, this is Chris.

Chris Raines: How you doing?

Michael Utley: Good. Good, doing great. We got some haze outside.

Chris Raines: There was a small amount of awkwardness in that first 'hey'.

Michael Utley: Yeah, the Canadian wildfires.

Chris Raines: I blame myself. It's the smoke in the air.

Michael Utley: That's better than tornadoes and pandemics though. And best wishes to the people in Canada.

Chris Raines: Yeah.

Michael Utley: Yeah. Episode 47. SEO Basics. How Should I Use Social Media in My Online Marketing?

Chris Raines: How should you?

Michael Utley: Well, SEO is kind of a big category, but it's influenced by everything else. So social media channels, how you use those, how you have those integrated, that can send a signal to search engines. So we're going to talk about that. Chris, you've got the first one let's talk about, kind of, picking your channels.

Chris Raines: Well at first it's kind of like a foundational, right? But it's selecting the best channels for your business. So there's not always an unlimited amount of time and budget to spend on something like social media. So it's really important to, you're not going to have a 10 channel strategy starting out. Right?

Michael Utley: Yeah, yeah. You don't need like 15 or 20 channels and this big bar of links somewhere.

Chris Raines: Yeah. Like a new.

Michael Utley: Like the old bookmarking plugins.

Chris Raines: Like a new investment planning firm for seniors, isn't going to have a TikTok strategy.

Michael Utley: Yeah, yeah.

Chris Raines: So that leads us into where should you be? So some good rules of thumb. There's maybe five or six big social media sites that you should look at. Right? So any consumer brand, your ice cream shop, your dermatology practice. Should be on Facebook and Instagram? Right?

Michael Utley: Facebook, Instagram, right out of the gate.

Chris Raines: Anything that is relating from business to business obviously should have a LinkedIn presence. So your financial advisor, your human resource, resources consultant, etc., LinkedIn. If you skew young and we're talking 18 to 30. You should probably be on TikTok right now.

Michael Utley: Okay.

Chris Raines: That's where all the action is. That's where a lot of energy is. Where a lot of screen time is. So you should probably be on TikTok, making videos for TikTok.

Chris Raines: What else? If you're doing anything that is in the news, entertainment.

Michael Utley: And current events.

Chris Raines: Political, you should be on Twitter.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: Right. So really selecting, and if you spend any amount of time at all on any of these platforms, you're going to get a sense for where you fit in. So really being selective and don't feel pressure. A lot of businesses feel pressure. You know, I've served businesses before that were like, I don't know. A blinds company or a shutter company, and they really were like, we got to get on Twitter. I'm like, well, why?

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: You know, no one's talking about shutters and home improvement. They're fighting about whatever.

Michael Utley: It's not a hot topic.

Chris Raines: Yeah. So it's not really part of the conversation there. You're going to be sort of. So don't feel like, is it bad to be on there? No. But you're not missing out on anything. Right?

Michael Utley: Yeah. And one of the things like when we work with companies like Trico Painting in California, they have really great presence on Facebook. You use photos of job sites. Sort of before and after pictures.

Chris Raines: You find them at Trico Painting, Facebook URL, Trico, Trico Painting.

Michael Utley: Facebook.com/tricopainting. But that's an example of where you have something really visual. You want to show that before and after. So Facebook and Instagram, they've really done a good job of being the go-to. And of course, Instagram is a property of Facebook now. They're the go-to for these highly visual and really photos and video are interchangeable. I don't think people really think of them as different formats anymore. You know, you might think of that more for YouTube, but for social media, I don't think we really think of those as two separate formats anymore.

Chris Raines: Yeah. So that's step one. Take a look at who you are, what you do, and who your customer is. And then pick your best channels. Don't try to go after all of them at once.

Michael Utley: Yeah. The real big value there is not like, oh, we're. . . We should be on LinkedIn. But it gives you permission to sort of cut away a lot of distraction that can take energy away from those primary channels.

Michael Utley: Number two, how strong is your social engagement? Get familiar with your KPIs. When you post something you want it to be sort of relevant and interesting to your audience. And so some of the numbers that you can start to watch is how many likes and shares are you getting? And we like to just roll those up into an engagement number. Just how much engagement are you getting? And the social media platforms all provide a number of analytics. And if you're a DodgeballSEO customer or a GoEpps customer. You will have an Apogee Metrics dashboard where we'll pull all those metrics in from your social media channels and give you tabs in your suite of dashboards to see those numbers.

Michael Utley: But it's good. One of the things that we've seen over the years, that's really helpful. Is that when a company is new to social media, they can't really tell if everyone is liking and engaging with the post because they shared it to friends and family, or they're trying to get something new started. And the employees were very motivated to engage with a social media post or if it's actually a really hot topic. So once you kind of get the new off of you and you're in these channels, you'll have a sense of what topics are most interesting. Typically, anything that's in the news, anything that's sort of timely. If you're doing something B2B related. For example, if you're in the cybersecurity industry in healthcare, and there is a major cybersecurity breach in the energy industry. Well guess what, that's going to be an interest to people even in healthcare. Even though it's a different industry.

Chris Raines: Yeah.

Michael Utley: And so that's something you don't really know until you're doing it. But we can see sort of the spikes and the engagement with social media. And that's really good. And the way that, that kind of factors in SEO is make sure that you're learning from what's hot in your social media activity. Where you're seeing engagement. And go ahead and roll that topic up to your blog. Make sure that if you get some traction and some energy in social media, that you're repeating that topic. Going in a little deeper, maybe get a few pull quotes from people, maybe adding an infographic, and making a blog post.

Michael Utley: Understanding where your engagement is and how hot the topics are. This may be kind of common sense to people, but for a lot of folks who are kind of figuring out how this stuff works together, that's how these two things work together in terms of engagement. Is there influencing one another and then the same way you can go the other way too. If you have blog topics that have been really great over the years. You've seen steady, consistent inbound traffic because that topic make sure you're rotating something in. In that category to your blog every once in a while.

Chris Raines: Yup.

Michael Utley: Or to your social posts. Yeah.

Chris Raines: That's good. Number three, make sure your social channels are listed in the footer of your website. Michael, there was a time where it was really popular to list at the top of your website. In the header, the little row in the header. People have moved away from that, and I think that's good. It's kind of not a great idea because it gives people this constant leak out from your site.

Michael Utley: Yeah. It's taking them away from other real high contact, touchpoints, like phone number or contact form.

Chris Raines: And you're linking people away from your site.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: But listing your footer is a good idea. Because it gives people a lot of times, Michael, especially in service-oriented businesses, they will go through a vetting process. When they are looking at a company. And a lot of times a vetting process involves checking out the social channels. Right?

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: So they're going to want to see like, do they have social channels? If not, I don't know, how do I suss out their reputation and like how people feel about them? Like the number of followers and things like that. So having that there for people and people are trained at this point to scroll down to the bottom, to look for those links. Right?

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: So that to me is the primary is probably the best reason to put it on your website. Just for people who are motivated to go down and look at your social channels, your LinkedIn, your Facebook, your whatever. They have that available to them. And if you're doing what you should be doing on those channels, you're going to see activity, you're see engagement, are going to see like a non-zero amount of followers.

Michael Utley: Right.

Chris Raines: To give them that feel-good impression of okay, this is a real company that has a real reputation. They have real followers and they didn't just like throw up a website.

Michael Utley: Yeah. It's telling them that the lights are on and somebody's home.

Chris Raines: The lights are on that's right. So yeah. Really simple thing to do, just put those links in the footer. Give people an avenue or a backdoor to check you out.

Michael Utley: Yep. And I would just something we always do is anytime we're linking off-site, we'll throw that open into a new tab. Just that's a standard for usability. If you're going off-site, you expect it to be in a new tab. And that way you're not sending people away from the website. It's kind of offset that. You still got that tab open keeping that phone number, that contact form, that lead form, whatever it is, you know, in their face.

Michael Utley: And then also on putting stuff in the footer. I would say that it doesn't have to be huge, but avoid falling into the trap of usability being an issue. Sometimes those icons, a lot of templates, a lot of templated websites have them just really, really small. And you want to make sure that anything in your footer is like part of the website. You know, don't treat it like fine print. Make it a part of the usability of the website.

Chris Raines: Right.

Michael Utley: You know, use good principles of universal design and make it a little bit like a destination. Maybe with, we tend to do bottom right corner of the website. In a web-based view of the website, excuse me, a desktop view of the website.

Michael Utley: But yeah, we'll make sure that those icons are not so small that they're kind of hidden there like a copyright statement. But they're pretty clickable. And of course, even "thumbable" on a mobile device.

Chris Raines: Yep.

Michael Utley: Yeah. Next up. And this is something we can do an entire episode on this topic. But are all the social channels settings being used? It's good to use and to populate all of the ways that you can add information about your business to each of your social channels.

Michael Utley: So when you get onto a site like Facebook. You can do the minimum to set up an account or a page. You can just have, you know, the name of your company, nothing else. But you have a lot of other real estate. You have room for a description. You have room for a full URL. You have room for a phone number. You can designate your price range. You can provide an email address. You can provide your hours of operation. You can even select what service is that you offer. So that you're part of a standardized taxonomy. In this case, in this example for Facebook.

Michael Utley: And then LinkedIn, these other channels are going to be similar. Twitter's not as robust. But for these channels where you really want to engage people and be present. Having all of those fields populated and validated is really important for SEM.

Michael Utley: One of the things that's happening there is Google. They're able to see if the phone number in your footer is the same as on your Facebook page. They're able to sort of match these things up. And so when someone's doing a branded search in Google, they may get your homepage as a first result. And then they may get your Facebook page as a second or third or fourth result. After a couple of searches or after a couple of results that are about your brand. Like a homepage and an about us page. And so the benefit of that is you're pushing a competitor off the page, off the search results page. So making sure that you've got all those fields populated, and you're thinking through how your page is going to look and checking to make sure.

Michael Utley: You can even generate leads directly from the social media page, because people see something and the phone number's right there. And so no matter what your business is, you don't want to leave. . . In aviation we say, don't leave any runway behind you. You go all the way to the end of the runway. So don't, waste any of these resources.

Michael Utley: Once this gets set up, it's there. And it's probably going to be there for years. So make sure you use all their settings. Same thing for images like the header image in Facebook or any of these channels, where you LinkedIn, any of these channels, where you get to have a little bit of creative influence. Make sure you utilize those and populate those fields and those images.

Chris Raines: That's great. Lastly, make sure you have an effective hashtag approach. So if you don't know, you probably know this, but hashtags are little links that show up on various. I think they all have them, some version of these, right? That you put a little pound sign and then you put a word. And that acts as a link where you can go then to another page and scroll everyone else who has hashtag that same thing.

Chris Raines: So a couple of things to say about hashtags. One is they're more important on some platforms than others. So primarily we're talking about Twitter and Instagram. Okay. And those are they're important on any platform that's completely open. What I mean by that is you can follow anyone at any time, regardless of their consent to follow you. So like Twitter's default behavior is I can follow anyone at any time. Anyone can follow me at any time. So that makes that platform really open. So anytime I hashtag it's just open to anyone in the world. If I hashtag something, anyone can search that and find me.

Chris Raines: Facebook's a little different because you have to be friends with that specific. Facebook is a "thumbable", more of a closed network. LinkedIn. I don't know. I feel like LinkedIn is kind of in the middle. Maybe like some people use it. I feel like people don't really search.

Michael Utley: It's more content-oriented now than ever.

Chris Raines: Yeah, it's not really. But, so we're really, really primarily, here talking about Twitter and Instagram. So one focus on those platforms. If you're focused on those platforms, hashtags are more important to you.

Chris Raines: And secondly, the thing I would say is one, don't just make up your own hashtag. A lot of people make up their own hashtags. Make sure you put some thought into it. There are various search engines you can use and get what the volume, the post volume is. I think Instagram even tells you if you put it in. How many posts. So it put some thought into which ones you're going to use. Use ones that get, they get more use, right?

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: That more people are using.

Michael Utley: And you can start typing and see which ones they suggest and they're suggesting the higher volume.

Chris Raines: Right. And secondly, I want to get your opinion on this. Because I don't have a strong opinion, but I'm curious what you think. I say use as many as you possibly can.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: Because they're, if you do it, I see a lot of people do the post and then they do like dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot to separate it out. So it doesn't clutter up the primary text of the post. Especially on platforms like Instagram. You do dot, dot, dot separate it. And then you just explode like 20 different hashtags at the bottom. To me, it's just more hooks in the water.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: It's uglier to look at.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: If you tend to scroll down, but it's really, I'm curious what your thoughts are.

Michael Utley: Yeah. I would say that we're in the wild west of hashtags right now, still. And so right now, more is better. It's like it used to be with SEO. Just, more is better. More is better. More is better. Yeah and so.

Chris Raines: I'm not aware that the platform's dilute. If you use 20, does it dilute your reach or your ranking?

Michael Utley: I don't know.I don't think so. I think right now I'm thinking about each individual, each individual one. Now I will say this. If you're trying to drive people from Facebook over to say LinkedIn, they will show it to hardly anyone. So there are ways that they regulate and they don't show as often. But I haven't seen that hashtagging, broader hashtagging. I haven't seen it, sort of, punished.

Michael Utley: So, yeah. But yeah, I would say more is better.

Chris Raines: So fill it up.

Michael Utley: It's just a trade-off.

Chris Raines: Just to be judicious with the ones that you use.

Michael Utley: I would say maintain high relevance. Because even for somebody visually scanning, you don't want someone coming in to come in because of a hashtag. Have low engagement, because then you're going to have chronically low engagement. And that post is going to be, that's going to hurt the post.

Chris Raines: Right.

Michael Utley: But any, I would say the volume could be high on the number of tags as long as the relevance is protected.

Chris Raines: Yeah.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: That's good. Okay.

Michael Utley: Excellent. We're good. Yeah. This has been Episode 47.

Chris Raines: 47.

Michael Utley: At Dodgeball Marketing Podcast. Check us out on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Subscribe and follow. And we're always talking about online marketing topics. A lot of search engine optimization. A lot of other stuff. And drop your comments, your likes below, and let us know you're out there, and yeah. Send us your questions and we'll cover them on the podcast. And we'll talk soon. Have a great day.

Chris Raines: Thanks a lot.