There are heaps of articles all over the net offering advice on how to work social media. In the last couple of years, the usefulness of social media to the average website has increased, and the SEO community has struggled to catch up. As usual, a lot of the catch-up has been done through explanation and elimination. This is great for SEO observers, as it provides a useful how-to guide for the basics.

In their eagerness to explain the fundamentals of social media optimisation, many professionals overlook the little things. A lot of the time, the more helpful and less obvious little tips get pushed off the page. This is a shame, because a lot of the little tips come in handy for every site, whether they participate in social media or not. Paying attention to social media methods can boost your communication with your customers in general.

First of all, don’t be selfish. Some of the most successful enterprises on the net are those that at least appear altruistic. Look at Google. It takes a little while for the average user to realise that the search engine is making money off them, if they ever realise it at all. To most people, Google is providing a free service which gives them nothing but benefit. Other mega-popular sites, like Wikipedia, get more attention from the fact that they’re doing something for the community than they get for their actual endeavours. What does this teach us? It teaches us that giving things away, providing outbound links to competitors and generally martyring yourself for the sake of being useful can get you big places in the internet community. Sometimes, being the go-to guy for information can get you a better ranking than being the end result of a search.

Know your audience. This often means knowing yourself as well. Many companies succeed simple because they spent a little time researching the interests of their site’s users. For more information on researching your site’s target audience, you can talk to us at SEO Consult. This is also important in general search engine optimisation.

Reward your users. People react well to encouragement. It’s a basic part of human growth. When your users help you, positively reinforce their experience by sending them a private note or recognising them publicly. Fostering warm relationships keeps users coming back to your site. Promoting them makes other users want to be friends with you.

Find a way to reward popularity. This is quite similar to the point above. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that everyone wants to be popular. As individuals, we may sneer at the concept, but group behaviour simply works this way. Finding a way to promote the popular people who interact with your site reinforces their popularity and connects their popularity with yours. It’s quite similar to the endorsements celebrities give in real life, on a much smaller scale of course.

Plan thoroughly. Planning is as important with social media as it is with SEO. While the way you present yourself to social media is a major component of success, without a plan your efforts can be focused in the wrong direction. Spend just a little time thinking about the social media that is most attractive to your site’s users before you take the plunge.

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