Clearly, the power and influence of social media is immense. It has permeated into every aspect of our lives. People are no longer known by their names, but also their twitter handles buy instagram views and likes paypal. We need look no further than the recent $1 billion purchase of Instagram by Facebook. I don’t know which side of that transaction is more astonishing; that a 13 employee company that built an app to take cellphone pictures which now has a billion dollars to split up, or that Facebook has sprung from a Harvard dorm room to the big screen to billion dollar expenditures.
But where does it fit into the day to day operations of 90 percent of the organizations in this country? Obviously Red Bull needs a Facebook and twitter presence, they have enormous brand loyalty and massive amounts of followers. How do small businesses harness the power of social media? Without large groups of fans and a famous brand, it can be very difficult to see the direct effect (profit) of spending resources on social media. Many of our clients have expressed concerns to us about whether or not social media is something that they can take advantage of, or have a use for. I imagine these same debates were taking place in the mid 90s about whether or not a company even needs a website.
The fact of the matter is, we’ve gotten to a place now that social media websites are having such a huge influence, if an organization does not have a presence on these sites, they are viewed as backwards and out of touch. So how does one use social media to help small businesses grow?
The best way to utilize social media to have an immediate impact on a company is with Search Engine Optimization. SEO relies on backlinking (other reputable sites linking to your site) and volume in order to improve a website’s page rank (how high a site appears in search results).
How do you get people to link to your website from others? Utilize a social media presence. The more often people are clicking on your website link from your Facebook page, twitter page, Foursquare location, Yelp listing, or blog posts, the higher up on search engines your website will appear. When your site gets a link from a large, highly ranked site, search engines such as Google index your site and improve its page rank.
This is a relatively easy way to utilize these free and powerful tools to immediately impact your business and improve your web presence. Instead of buying billboards and taking out ad space, you can harness the power of social media and exponentially multiply your company’s internet presence, oftentimes without spending a dime.